Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in '24'.

PASADENA, Calif. -- It would have been cool if Kiefer Sutherland's dad had played Jack Bauer's dad this season on 24.

"We tried to get him," Sutherland said of his famous father Donald, who co-starred on Commander In Chief last season. "Unfortunately he was doing a film in Australia (Fool's Gold, with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson) and the dates just didn't work out."

Sutherland was surrounded by critics with recorders at Tuesday's set visit to 24, which is shot well out of Los Angeles in an industrial area even Jack Bauer would be hard pressed to find.

The affable star was his usual patient self, fielding as many questions as possible.

James Cromwell (Babe, Six Feet Under) will be playing Jack Bauer's father in future episodes.

Sutherland said plans to spin off a 24 feature film have been shelved until the series is retired (which won't be until at least 2008). Whether or not Sutherland, also an executive producer, will stay with the series as Bauer is anybody's guess. "I'm not dead yet," said Sutherland, who has no guarantee that Bauer will always survive. "They have the option to use me if they choose," he said, adding that Bauer's fate is in the hands of series creator Joel Surnow. Sutherland is in no hurry to leave, however. "I love my job and want to do it."

He's excited by the changes in his character this season, with Bauer changing from "a guy who was ready to surrender his existence to a guy who now wants to fight for it."

Asked if he had any fears that Bauer was morphing into some kind of indestructible cartoon character (he was beaten for 20 months before being rescued from a Chinese prison at the start of this season), Sutherland said that the show requires "a leap of faith."

If they take him too far, he figures, that will be the time to kill him off.

Sutherland wasn't the only Canadian on the premises. Co-executive producer/director Jon Cassar led critics on a tour of the CTU set. (He was easy to spot in his Toronto Maple Leafs cap). Carlos Rota was also on hand to meet and greet with critics, as was former NYPD Blue player Ricky Schroeder, new this season as a CTU operative.

The set was a cool mix of hi-tech and low maintenance. The walls look like the inside of a concrete subway tunnel (although if you knock on them they're hollow). Plasma screens and cool gadgetry phones are littered all over glass-top tables. Cassar admitted most of the goodies are product placements from corporations like Sisko and Sprint. "Big Fox makes all the deals," he said. "If Big Fox is in league with Apple and Dell, we're in league with Apple and Dell."

For a series which features a digital countdown of the time before every commercial break, there are no clocks in CTU. Cassar said they took them all out after the first few episodes when they realized they were screwing with the continuity. "We go out of our way to not say time on this show," said Cassar. "Nobody ever says 'Meet me in five minutes.' It's always 'Meet me soon.' It's almost become a joke."