24 almost a romcom

We don't get Rush Limbaugh here in Australia, and so most of my knowledge of him is from secondary sources and satire (most notably The Simpsons). I expected him to be a stereotypical right-wing blowhard, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that his interview with Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon, two of the creative minds behind 24, is actually quite insightful and interesting (he may still be a stereotypical right-wing blowhard on political subjects, for all I know).

Joel Surnow, one of the two creators, describes here his initial concept for the show:

The idea, I originally had the idea of doing a show in real time. Most TV seasons are 22 episodes. I thought, 'What if you do two more and make them one hour in a day, 24 hours, in a 24 episode season?' I called my partner, one of my friends who I write with, Robert Cochran, and we originally bandied about the idea and thought, what if you do 24 hours in the day of a wedding and make it a romantic comedy, and then we scrapped that idea. We thought, 'The whole power of doing real time is make it a race against time, have the stakes be really high,' and so then we sort of started coming up with the idea of a counter terrorist unit, et cetera, et cetera.

If you are a fan of the show, the interview is very interesting, however be warned that they discuss the fifth season, which hasn't been shown here in Australia yet