Brian Bowen Smith/FOXJack is back, y'all!
OK, so he's not really back as Jack Bauer, but 24's Kiefer Sutherland made his official return to TV tonight in NBC's ambitious new drama Touch, which hails from Heroes creator Tim Kring. Sounds like a recipe for success, right?
Well, we're about to find out! The time has come for you to tell us what you thought of Touch...
Kiefer plays widower Martin Bohm in this high-concept drama about a father who is unable to connect with his mute and emotionally challenged son Jake (David Mazouz). Things take an interesting turn with Martin learns that Jake can predict future events before they happen.
"[The show] is based on a Chinese fable called The Red Thread, and in essence it means that all the people that were supposed to come in contact with each other over the course of a lifetime are connected loosely by a red thread around the ankle, and that thread can stretch and it can bend but it can't break," Kiefer tells us of the show's concept. "And somehow in the last hundred years between the Industrial Revolution and the Technological Revolution, we've broken it. And my son is much more highly evolved than I am and can see where it is broken through math and through patterns. He uses me as his father to try and put all of the pieces back together."
Fans of 24 will be able to see shades of Jack Bauer in Touch, particularly in Martin's relationship with his son. The real driving force for my character is to communicate with my son. The rest of the stuff is really for the audience and how one thing can affect another," Kiefer explains. "The one parallel that I can bring from the two characters is that Jack Bauer was asked to save the day and there were always going to be casualties. And this character Martin Bohm is never going to have the perfect idyllic relationship with his son. They'll both never completely win, and that is one thing that I'm drawn to certainly as an actor."
Still, Kiefer is quick to distance Martin from Jack, telling us, "He gets to sit down and he gets to have an intimate conversation. This is not a serialized show like 24 was. There's a beginning a middle and an end. There's almost an immediate result in a situation."
Also starring in Touch are Danny Glover as Professor Arthur Tellar, an expert on children with special abilities when it comes to numbers, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Clea, a social worker.
Save It or Sink It, March 22
Now we want to hear from you: were you touched by Touch? Will you be tuning in next week? Vote in our latest Save It or Sink It poll and then head on down to the comments to chat about Kiefer's new show with your fellow TV lovers. You know you want to!