AND ON THE SECOND DAY ... THE CREATORS OF '24' GET THE NEW SEASON ROLLING - AND THE SHOW'S ACTORS HOLD ON FOR THEIR LIVES.

Byline: David Kronke TV Writer

IN THE FIRST two episodes of the new season of ``24,'' Fox's action- thriller series in which a single momentous day plays out over a season, Kiefer Sutherland, who stars as agent Jack Bauer, murders a man and mutilates the corpse.

Dennis Haysbert, essaying President David Palmer, threatens to ``destroy'' a Middle Eastern country and has someone about to leak sensitive information silenced. Elisha Cuthbert, playing Jack's daughter Kim, beats on a guy with a crowbar. Sarah Wynter as Kate Warner rifles through a potential terrorist's belongings for proof of his anarchic background while he lingers nearby.

They all sound like pretty tough, take-charge customers, don't they? Well, scratch that - ask the actors anything about the particulars of the new season and they become timorous as church mice.

``Right now, everything's hypothetical,'' demurs Sutherland.

``They haven't told me that,'' Cuthbert responds to a question about whether she'll spend as much time this season being kidnapped as last. ``It was kind of fun. I like having the record of 'most kidnaps in one day ever in the history of television.' ''

``I've read a couple of scripts, but I'm half expecting to get a new script in the morning with a note: 'Those were just to fool everyone,' '' jokes Wynter, who joins the cast as a young woman who fears her sister may be marrying a terrorist. ``There's so much intrigue and curiosity - I've never been involved with anything where people want to know so much and leave spoilers on the Internet. People who were never interested in me before are now very interested.''

What the stars can't tell you, the writers will - a little. Hoping to duplicate its success of last year, ``24'' returns tonight on Fox beginning another daylong potboiler. It comes boasting serious hot-button topics: Terrorists plan to detonate a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles; it may be part of a Middle-Eastern plot against America.

``We want to explore the reaction to Americans of Middle-Eastern backgrounds, who may or may not be completely innocent, and what's it like for them,'' explains series co-creator Bob Cochran, who won an Emmy last month for writing ``24's'' pilot.

Teri's no-good day

As ``24's'' first season wound down this past spring, some viewers took it to task for its increasingly soap-operatic plotting, specifically in the awful fates rained down upon Jack's long-suffering wife, Teri (Leslie Hope) - who was attacked repeatedly by terrorists, raped, discovered she was pregnant, suffered temporary amnesia and, ultimately, was murdered - and the last-second revelation that Jack's faithful colleague (and former mistress) Nina (Sarah Clarke) was a turncoat.

As Carlos Bernard, who played agent Tony Almeida, puts it, ``The tag line was always, 'The worst day of Jack's life,' and I'm always thinking, 'What about Teri's?' They had to kill her; what else could they do to her?''

Clarke jokes, ``What's nice about being a double agent is, you're that good - you don't even know you're a double agent!''

Xander Berkeley, who played cynical agent Mason - who replaces Jack as head of the Counter Terrorist Unit in season two - and got engaged to Clarke in real life during season one, says of his fiancee, ``Stranger things have happened - they may be the things people avoid writing about because no one would ever believe it. But it gave her something a lot more fun to play, because Nina was so loyal and so obsessed with Jack that I know she was at the point where if she had to say one more time'' - adopting a mock-concerned tone - `` 'Where's Jack?' she would've gone nuts.''

Reon Shannon, who plays Palmer's son Keith, points out, ``You can't pick one little thing and say, 'This seems a little extreme.' The whole thing was extreme! You got to go with the flow.''

Executive producer Howard Gordon notes that some of the plotting was the result of the show's creators' refusal to rigidly map out the entire season's plot lines, and says fans refused to buy Teri's demise. ``People came up to me for weeks afterward and said, 'She's not really dead, is she?' and I had to convince them that she is.

``Some of the power of the show is its improvisational energy,'' he observes. ``We're as free-wheeling in our approach this year as we were last year. My inclination as a writer is to want to know what's going to happen in episode 21 and 22 and 23. And that's something I've had to relinquish. This is Bob and (co-creator Joel Surnow's) approach, and I've come to admire it because there's an energy - an off-the-cuff quality that gets communicated.''

Cochran adds, ``First, we're not capable of thinking that far ahead, and secondly, the best ideas are the ones that surprised us. You're thinking, 'What absolutely cannot happen here? OK, that's what has to happen.' That's the way we come up with stories, things that are shocking and yet logical - oh my god, I didn't see that coming and yet, I buy it.''

And if Nina wasn't who she appeared to be at the beginning of the season, Cochran suggests that maybe she's likewise not who she appeared to be at season's end, either. ``It could turn out that she was actually a double agent,'' he says. ``We can do anything with her that we like. If she killed Jack's wife, that could be collateral damage. If her major assignment was to keep her cover, then anything she does - including going to jail for murder - could be part of her assignment.''

Special feature

Due to the series' unconventional nature and the fact that though it wasn't a ratings smash, it garnered a particularly loyal following, ``24's'' first season has already been released on DVD (including an alternate ending in which Teri survived). But since the DVD was rushed into the marketplace, Clarke opines, ``They didn't ask us to add commentaries to it - I could give some real insight!'' For example? ``This is the scene where I met Xander!''

Therefore, we'll allow the actors to add thoughts on season one you won't find on the DVD:

Berkeley: ``I was just signed for the pilot, and we didn't know if my character would come back, but my sister told me, 'They have to bring you back - Mason brings the absolutely necessary elements of wit and gravitas to the show!' With all those young people in there, you sort of need the middle-age white guy who looks like he can actually run an office like that.''

Clarke: ``When they first told me I was the mole, I went back and looked at scenes - 'Wait a minute! How did this work?' But it gave me something very specific to play, and that was a gift. Because sometimes your scene is just, 'I'm typing on a computer,' and you're looking around for motivation.''

Haysbert: ``A couple of times I had to go to the writers and say, 'You know what? This doesn't make sense right now.' And they'd come down to the set, look at it and write up something new. They'd say, 'You like that?' and we'd look at it and say, 'Yeah, that works.' ''

Penny Jerald Johnson, who played Palmer's duplicitous wife, Sherry: ``I would rather play this character over any character - I've played goody- two-shoes, I've been so sweet and syrupy, which is so close to who I am - I'm a sap at times. But this has tapped into another part of me. My (real-life) husband's just tickled - 'You get to show off on-screen, but don't try that at home!' There should be a little caption: 'Women: Do not try this at home!' '' (Though she will be divorced from the president this season, Johnson's character will attempt to insinuate herself back into his life.)

Says Shannon, ``You're at the mercy of the writers. If one of them says, 'I don't like the way he looks,' you're dead.''

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) The clock is ticking ...

`24' returns with terrorists, nukes and enough plot twists to match last season's success

KIEFER SUTHERLAND AS JACK BAUER

(2 -- 3) Dennis Haysbert, above, as the U.S. president, will be calling on anti-terrorist agent Kiefer Sutherland, right, on Fox's ``24.''

(4 -- 6) A day in the life of Jack Bauer: After sending daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) to her au pair job, top, Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) deals with his boss (Xander Berkeley, center left) at the Counter Terrorist Unit in L.A. By midmorning's gun battle, Jack wonders why he didn't stay in bed, bottom.