Wendy joins 24 crew
Actress latest Canuck added to hit show
By KEVIN WILLIAMSON -- Calgary Sun

Wendy Crewson could tell us everything about 24, but then they'd have to kill her.

"It's sort of scary. I'm chatting with people and I'm thinking, 'Have I said too much already?' " says the Canadian actress who joins the Emmy-winning hit drama this season.

What information can be gleaned from Crewson is as follows: She plays a doctor. And? "And I can say my storyline is involved with one of the show's leading men. I think that's all I can say. Hopefully Fox doesn't fly an assassin up to take me out."

Or write her off the show. Which may have already happened. Your guess is as good as her's. "I was sitting in a make-up chair and the make-up guy said to me, 'Have you read episode eight?' And I was like, 'Oh no -- what? Am I dead?' And he goes, 'Well, you're not dead.' It's like oh my god, you just have to wait for the other shoe to drop. People ask, 'Are you good or bad,' and I have no idea. You just have to play it as it lays and hope the writers know what they're doing ... You're always waiting for the next script and the heads of the departments see them first, so you're skulking around the set."

Despite the job insecurity -- it's been said that, on the set of 24, no one except perhaps star-executive producer Kiefer Sutherland is safe -- Crewson is clearly thrilled to be on a series that, frankly, will actually have an audience.

"It's the first really successful television show I've done, that will actually be seen by people; it's a whole new thing. People really like it and they're actually going to watch it. There's a confidence you can feel on the set. They know they've got a hit on their hands. They've got that energy. It's different from slogging through some show that you're not even sure is going to end up on the air. It's very exciting."

Exciting and deceptively easy. Crewson says the show's producers simply called and offered her a role. While she's not sure why, she suspects it has something to do with the series' now-infamous "Canadian connection."

Along with Sutherland, the cast includes Calgary-born Elisha Cuthbert, Mia Kirshner and, before she was knocked off, Leslie Hope. (Yes, it's the Canadian series everyone's been waiting for -- the good one.) "(24 co-creator) Joel Surnow also produced La Femme Nikita in Toronto for all those years and I think he got a sense of Canadian actors and who they are. And we have Kiefer who's the executive producer and star of the show ... He's got a big say in the show. I think he's very involved in the story ... It's a show aware of this particular pool of talent."

Sutherland, she adds, "is great. He's fabulous. He's a movie star. He's got that movie star stuff. It's something to behold. He's got that presence. Everybody's really good, but he just shines. Plus he's a great guy. I'm friends with his mom.

"We drink the same beer brand. It's like that. We talk about Toronto, about the house he's got here -- it's just a little ways down from where I am. We talk about commuting between here and L.A. and you work that out."

While Crewson doesn't know how long she'll be around, she turned down other offers to sign a blind commitment to 24. She says it wasn't a hard choice. "I'm just enjoying it while it's happening. If it's brief, I don't mind -- that's fine, too. Honest to God, I've had a great five years. I've worked more now than I ever did in my 20s. The perception is that you're 32 -- that's it, you're over. But I didn't get going, at this sort of pace, until I was deep into my 30s."

Crewson's a presidential sweetie
ROB SALEM

She's sleeping with a president.

Again.

When the cult-hit "real-time" thriller, 24, returns tomorrow night for its third-season debut - an almost entirely commercial-free hour, starting at 9 on Fox and Global - three years will have passed since the tumultuous events of last season.

Much has changed. Spy guy Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) has been deep undercover, trying to nail an insidious drug lord (Joachim de Almeida). His catastrophe-prone daughter, Kim (Elisha Cuthbert), has stopped wandering into crack dens and being chased by cougars long enough to sign on as a research intern with the Counter Terrorist Unit. She has also (minor spoiler here) started seriously dating her dad's hotshot young partner, Chase Edmunds (James Badge Dale).

David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), having survived last season's terrorist attack, is still the President of the United States ... except now he has a new woman on his arm, Dr. Anne Packard (Wendy Crewson).

And she isn't just there to take his pulse.

A week after winning her fourth Gemini Award, for her riveting lead performance in the Canadian TV-movie, The Many Trials Of One Jane Doe, the Hamilton-born Crewson joined the cast of 24 as the President's primary caregiver - and covert love interest.

Haysbert, as it happens, is not Crewson's first fictitious Commander In Chief. How well we remember her imperilled First Lady in the feature Air Force One, opposite a heroically presidential Harrison Ford.

"When they need a presidential consort, they come to me," Crewson shrugs, sitting down for a beer the afternoon after her Gemini win. "I don't know why that is. Because if they really knew me, it'd be, like, `No! She's trailer trash!'"

That being said, Crewson's real-life husband, fellow actor Michael Murphy, played a presidential hopeful in the Robert Altman cable mini, Tanner '88 (not to mention J.F.K. himself in the 1998 comedy The Island, and the mayor of Gotham City in Batman Returns).

"See, first I had to sleep with a candidate before I actually got to sleep with a president," Crewson laughs. "I'm working my way up the political ladder."

And then there's the strange case of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Crewson's screen husband in The 6th Day, and now, incredibly, the newly named Governor of California.

"That's right!," Crewson exclaims. "I'd forgotten about that. I was married to the governor! I guess I really am the power behind the throne.

"You know, I called Arnold and sent my congratulations. He really is a smart guy. He's playing dumb, but he's as smart as a whip. When we were shooting 6th Day, he had this chess master following him around the set all day, and they'd play chess between every take.

"He's just so charming and social, and so incredibly generous. And this `groping' thing? Ridiculous. This is a man who loves women. So sure, he's gonna hug you. But he's no sicko. It's all in good humour."

If Crewson can be perceived as having had more than her share of politically powerful pseudo-booty, then 24 itself must be well over its legal limit when it comes to imported Canadian talent.

"Kiefer, Elisha, Leslie Hope, Mia Kirshner, me ... Finally, we've done it. We've created the great Canadian series. It just happens to be an American show."

Crewson has just completed filming her first, eight-episode story arc - with no idea yet as to when or even if she may be coming back.

But then, it is very likely that neither do the show's producers. They have, over the last two seasons, become quite frighteningly adept at deliberately plotting themselves into corners, then somehow happily tap-dancing their way out again.

"They've become so good at it," Crewson marvels, "that it really doesn't matter how big and over-the-top it is. Because everybody buys it. Everybody's with them.

"The problem with that," she adds, from the actors' standpoint, "is that you don't ever know what's coming down the pike: Who you are, what you're going to be, what you're hiding, what's really going on when you hand him that bottle of pills ... And because you never really know any of this, you have to be careful not to play into it. And it has to be absolutely real. You have to keep that tension level high, even when you don't know what the tension is. Even if it's just fake tension. You have to make it all seem vitally important and really, really urgent, without turning it into melodrama."

On the plus side, her storyline - however it may ultimately pan out - is not nearly as harrowing or intense as what fellow Canadians Sutherland and Cuthbert must endure every single week.

"I'm in a powerful position, being at (the President's) side. But the nice thing about it is, my stuff is kind of contained. That story moves at a different pace. And it isn't long before everything hits the fan. It all falls apart real fast."

Whether or not that might include an on-screen confrontation between her character and Palmer's duplicitous ex-wife, Sherry (fan favourite Penny Johnson Jerald), Crewson either doesn't know or isn't allowed to say.

"But I would love that," she admits. "I mean, how much fun would that be?"

She may just get her wish. Though producers have not acknowledged the Jerald character's return, the advance episodic art for the season's third hour does include a shot of the scheming Sherry in a face-to-face with her former husband.

A cat fight in the Oval Office? My bet's on Wendy Crewson.

Mum's the Word for New '24' Star
Chris Gardner

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "My name is Dr. Ann Packard. That's my name, so you can deduce that I am a woman, and I am a doctor, and that's, of course, all I can say," says Wendy Crewson, who is about to make her "24" debut opposite Kiefer Sutherland (news) on the hit Fox series, which begins its third season Tuesday.

"I'm sort of involved with one of the leading male characters, but I'm afraid I can't say which one," she adds.

Fair enough. But what she will talk about is "24's" Canadian connection.

"At last, the great Canadian series we've been waiting for," says Crewson, who has appeared in such films as "Air Force One" and both "Santa Clause" films. "There are so many of us -- Kiefer, Elisha Cuthbert (news), Leslie Hope (news), our DP (director of photography) and a lot of the main directors," Crewson adds. "There's a great swelling of national pride in Canada for this show."

There seems to be a lot of Great White North pride for her as well: She just picked up a Gemini Award for best actress in a TV movie called "The Many Trials of One Jane Doe."

"It's nice to work in Canada where I can get big leading-lady parts in lovely movies," she says. "When you are (in Los Angeles), there is vast competition and so many people that are kind of ahead of you in line. I can get a smaller part in a big movie here, which gives me enough of a profile to get a big part in a smaller movie up there, so it's a nice balance."

'I'm a consort of presidents and kings'
Wendy Crewson joins a talented team of Canucks in the third season of 24, GAYLE MacDONALD writes.
The White House setting is a familiar one for her
Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Wendy Crewson clearly has a "thing" for presidents. First, she was Harrison Ford's better half in the 1997 thriller Air Force One. Then the Canadian actress was the squeeze of another presidential hopeful in HBO's caustic miniseries Tanner '88.

Now TV audiences will get to see Crewson in her latest White House incarnation, as the very personal physician and love interest of President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), one of the stars in the cult-hit Fox TV series, 24, which makes its third-season debut tonight. "I'm a consort of presidents and kings, dammit," jokes Hamilton-born Crewson. "They just knew, given my track record, that I could handle the guy."

With her dark, refined good looks, Crewson looks the perfect presidential partner. But the 47-year-old actress figures her "Canadian-ness" might have had as much to do as anything with her landing this plum, eight-episode role. "Usually you have to audition 60 times for 800 producers," says Crewson, who moved from California back to Toronto with her husband, actor Michael Murphy and two kids, Maggie and Jack, a few years ago. "They just called me up and said, 'Would you like to do this part on 24?' "

The show's executive producer, Joel Surnow, already knew Crewson and her work. An American, Surnow had spent a great deal of time in the Great White North a few years ago, consulting on La Femme Nikita.

Crewson figures it didn't hurt, either, that 24's leading man Kiefer Sutherland, another Canuck (and the grandson of former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas), had long known, and liked, Crewson's résumé.

Crewson accepted their offer. And since July, she's been flying back and forth from L.A. to Toronto, filming the espionage thriller which packs a season into a 24-hour span. "It's kind of a kicker because I moved everyone up here with the promise that if I was in Toronto, at least sometimes, I could go to work in the morning and come home at night. During the 10 years we lived in San Francisco, I only did one movie in that town. We move up here, and I'm back in L.A.," Crewson sighs, smiling.

She finished shooting her eight-episodes last week.

In keeping with the series's code of silence, Crewson can't divulge much about her character, Anne Packard, and what the good doctor will get up to. But she throws out a few teasers. "I'm a personal physician, whatever that entails," she says with a smirk. "What it means is I have full access, which of course puts me in the position of being dangerous and threatening.

"Not only am I Palmer's doctor, I'm his lover as well. The president's brother is now his chief of staff [Wayne Palmer is played by D.B. Woodside, formerly Principal Robin Wood on Buffy the Vampire Slayer] and there is, uh, certain tensions that go on. Not only am I very close to the president, I'm also obviously very white. And he's black."

Crewson joins several other top talents on 24 who jokingly refer to themselves as the Commonwealth because of their Canadian connections -- including Sutherland (son of national acting icons Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas), playing the counterterrorist ace Jack Bauer; Elisha Cuthbert, who grew up in Port Coquitlam, B.C., and Montreal, who is Bauer's daughter, and the first Mrs. Bauer, who was played by Halifax-born Leslie Hope, who unfortunately got knocked off at the end of the first season.

Tonight's episode begins with Palmer, back in the presidential saddle fully recovered, it seems, after an assassination attempt three years ago. The day starts off badly, and quickly get worse, as Bauer and Palmer, in tandem once again, try to thwart a deadly virus unleashed on the City of Angels by a nasty drug czar, Ramon Salazar.

Crewson says she has no clue how long her character's lifeline will be with the show. "What the writers/producers do is they hint at what you may be doing down the line, but they never tell you specifically," Crewson explains. "And that's because I don't think they know. There is a sense in this series that the writers run on what they see happening. I'm sure they have a general outline of what's going on. But I think there's a lot of seat-of-the-pants kind of stuff, which is probably what keeps this show crackling."

Crewson doesn't seem overly stressed about the fate of Dr. Anne Packard. After all, she's got other projects underway, including the film A Home at the End of the World with Colin Farrell and Sissy Spacek, and The Clearing, in which she plays Robert Redford's mistress.

She laughs boisterously when asked if she thinks her star-turn in 24 will turn her into a celebrity that gets harassed at her local supermarket. "Here's the great thing about being a woman in show biz," she says. "I'm completely unrecognizable in the grocery store. I just look like any other frazzled mother in sweatpants and a baseball cap, screaming at her kids to put the Fruit Loops down."

The New Mrs. Palmer? First Leslie Hope. Then Penny Johnson Jerald and Sarah Wynter. So many losses on 24 we know it's wise not to get attached.

But color me naive, I've already fallen for Wendy Crewson, the latest femme fatale to join 24. Mostly because she's also a fan who knows about loss.

"I'm really good friends with Leslie Hope, who played Kiefer Sutherland's wife the first season," she said, "so I was devoted right away. I was so mad they killed her! I didn't want to watch it anymore, but they pulled me back in."

Her devotion to the show explains why she's willing to make a few sacrifices. "I have two children who feel neglected when I'm not around," Crewson said. "So, doing a television show is really difficult...When they called about 24, I said, 'I can't say no to this. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.' If 24 calls or Six Feet Under calls, you don't even question it, you just go."

Crewson already has shot eight episodes playing "a love interest for the President" (Dennis Haysbert). And of course, even she doesn't know how long she's staying. "It's tough. I mean, an actress is paranoid already, and they put you in a situation where you could get shot in the head at any time. The heads of the departments get the scripts first, and sometimes if they are laying around, the actors just snatch 'em up and flip frantically through to see what's going to happen to them--if they're good, bad, dead. It keeps you on your toes."

Tue, October 28, 2003

24 hours
Ex-Winnipegger Wendy Crewson joins the cast of Fox's hit series
By Bill Brioux

When 24 returns for a third season tonight (8 p.m. on Fox and Global), there'll be yet another Canadian in the cast: Former Winnipegger Wendy Crewson. The recent Gemini winner (for The Many Trials of One Jane Doe) begins an eight-episode stint tonight as Dr. Anne Packard, a doc who attends to president Palmer (Dennis Haysbert). Hey, wasn't he killed off in last season's cliffhanger?

"I brought him back to life, Bill," says Crewson on the phone. "It was a tough job but they had to come to a Canadian girl to get it done."

Not just any Canadian girl. Born in Hamilton, Ont., but raised in Winnipeg, Crewson's brazen lip lock with CBC News Anchor Ian Hanomansing -- her own personal tribute to Oscar-winner Adrien Brody -- was the high point of last week's Gemini gala.

"He was a little bit speechless, but when he got backstage he was at least smiling by then," she says. "The look of terror had been wiped off his face."

Crewson says she's as surprised as anyone that she wound up on 24. "They called me up and asked," she says. "I didn't even have to audition."

Close pal Leslie Hope was a 24 regular in Season One and two other Canucks -- Kiefer Sutherland and Elisha Cuthbert (danger-prone daughter Kim) star in the series.

There are plenty of Canadians behind the scenes too, says Crewson, including director Jon Cassar (Nikita), who is pals with Jane Doe director Jerry Ciccoritti.

Her character ministers to the president in more ways than one as his new gal pal. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to pucker up to Haysbert, says Crewson. "OK, he's no Ian Hanomansing," she jokes.

Then again, her other leading men haven't exactly been chopped liver. Crewson has been paired on-screen with the likes of Harrison Ford, Tom Selleck and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Off-screen, another actor plays hubby at home: Woody Allen fave Michael Murphy. The couple have two kids.

That Schwarzenegger connection could come in handy. Crewson says that even on the 24 set, there's a chill where Canadians are concerned. "You really have to watch it down there," she says. Besides the runaway production resentment, there's that Iraqi war sidestep.

"Used to be we were a nonentity down there," says Crewson. "But as our cool factor goes up so does our visibility and we become a target."

Crewson mentions the $200 million tax credit currently before the U.S. Congress that demands a 75% American job quota. That and the rising Canadian dollar -- as well as competition from places like South Africa and Romania -- could squeeze Canadians out of the production loop.

Crewson should know. Her next project takes her to Romania, where she will shoot the British Channel 4 drama Sex Traffic.

Still, she's determined to find ways to keep working in Canada "with all this amazing talent." Crewson is one of the founding members of The Movie Co-op, a unique new venture that teams her with actors such as Maury Chaykin, Peter Outerbridge and Paul Gross, as well as production suppliers such as William F. White, on 20-minute demo reels.

Everything is done on spec. The reels are then shopped around to financial interests as a way around the current Canadian funding mess. The finished films are later shopped to distributors at filmfests and international markets.

It's a way to try to "come up with original programming and not a carbon copy of some American formula," says Crewson, who walks the walk -- on both sides of the border.

"24"s Wendy Crewson
By Lorrie Lynch USA Weekend.com
November 16, 2003

In the complicated world of Fox's "24," nothing is too outlandish, so why shouldn't the U.S. president (played on the show by Dennis Haysbert) have a doctor who's also his girlfriend? Enter Wendy Crewson. "Being the girlfriend is a step up," she says. "I've been a lot of wives, to presidents and otherwise, but there's something more interesting about being the girlfriend. It allows you a life outside of his career." Like "24" star Kiefer Sutherland, Crewson, 47, is a native of Canada. She now lives in Toronto with children Maggie, 14, and Jack, 11, and husband Michael Murphy, whom she met making the 1988 HBO miniseries "Tanner '88" (he played the title character, a presidential candidate). Crewson has two movies coming up: "In A Home at the End of the World," she plays the mother -- she says with a mock snort of disgust -- of Colin Farrell, but "it's his mother when he's young!" And she's Robert Redford's girlfriend in "The Clearing." "I like going from wives to mistresses at this late date in my life," she says. Who wouldn't when Robert Redford is involved?

Lo and behold, 'Kisser' Crewson saves the day
By JOHN DOYLE
Thursday, October 30, 2003 - Page R2

This is a true story. It's not necessarily gripping, but it's true.

Okay, so I wasn't here yesterday. On Tuesday, when I'd normally be writing what you read here on Wednesday, I was so not on the lam. I put on a suit and went to moderate a panel at the augustly named 7th Annual Film & Television Summit. The topic for discussion was "Canadian Drama: Is Recovery in the Script?" You can call me a lot of things but damn it, I'm dedicated.

A bunch of current and former TV execs, producers and representatives of TV writers and directors' organizations sat in a row, with me at the end. It was mid-morning. The audience numbered a few dozen. At the best of times, a discussion of the problems surrounding Canadian TV drama tends to cast a pall over an event. On this occasion, I tried manfully to get people to talk about TV programs, not just policy, funding agencies and regulatory requirements.

What the occasion needed, I realized, was glamour -- the glamour of an actor or celebrity figure that could articulate what it meant to make Canadian TV drama. I didn't know it at the time, but what the occasion needed was the now ubiquitous Wendy "Kisser" Crewson.

I asked the participants to name Canadian dramas they had personally enjoyed and admired, and not merely from a professional perspective. Some mentioned Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, which had just aired on CBC. As soon as somebody mentioned the CBC miniseries Trudeau, everybody gushed about it. There was a glow of satisfaction because everybody agreed it had been terrific TV.

At the end of the discussion (which covered the role of specialty channels, the decline of CBC's role, the problem of getting Canadians excited about locally made drama), I asked the participants to name an upcoming Canadian TV drama that they might recommend to people -- again, not merely out of professional duty, but because it was entertaining TV.

This was a tricky question but it crystallized the situation -- there isn't a lot of upcoming Canadian TV drama. The producer of the CTV miniseries Morgentaler gamely recommended his own show. As soon as somebody suggested that Wonderland (a CBC series created by playwright George F. Walker) might be good, everybody recommended that too.

Then I came to work. I turned on the computer and the TV. On TV, it was Question Period in the House of Commons. I sat and watched for a few minutes, because Question Period is one of the few instances of continuing Canadian TV drama. All the MPs were in a flap about freebies from the Irving family. People were making accusations and others were making apologies.

Then, to my astonishment, a fella stood up and, apropos of nothing at all, mentioned that he'd recently had the pleasure of meeting Kisser Crewson. He said, "A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Wendy Crewson who last week received a well-deserved Gemini Award for best actress in a TV movie. As she said, 'Canadian drama is in a rough spot right now.' " He had a question for the Parliamentary Secretary about the government coming through with stable funding for Canadian TV drama. In response, up popped Carole-Marie Allard, MP for Laval-Est and parliamentary secretary to Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. She said in response to the fella, "I can tell him that he is not the only one concerned about the dissatisfaction of the public in English-speaking Canada with respect to English-language Canadian drama. The CRTC is also concerned and has just issued a public notice to gather comments from Canadians."

So there -- the problem of Canadian TV drama is not just a source of worry for a handful of TV execs and writers. It is being discussed in Parliament, albeit for two minutes, in-between fiery accusations of petty corruption. And who is responsible? It's that Kisser Crewson woman again.

I thought it was rather interesting that Allard seemed to suggest that the public is not happy with the situation. Maybe she sees Crewson as representative of the public. I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but Crewson is having one hell of an effect. She's on TV, in the papers and now she's getting MPs antsy about Canadian TV drama. Next thing you know, she'll be standing for election. Who says we don't have star system in Canada?

24's Sutherland kisses and tells
Tonight on 24: Will Jack get out of another tight corner?
By BILL BRIOUX -- Toronto Sun
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

When we last saw 24 tough guy Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), he was smooching with that evil hussy, double agent Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke). Hey, didn't she once kill his wife? What's up with that?

That was certainly Leslie Hope's reaction. The Canadian-born actress, now starring as a kick-ass agent of her own on ABC's Line Of Fire, played the late Mrs. Bauer on Season One of 24. Her character's cold-blooded murder was the most shocking climax to any series in years.

Hope was just as aghast about the sneaky spy vs. spy kiss as the rest of us. "Kiefer never told me anything about that," Hope told a couple of Canadian TV columnists earlier this month at the ABC press tour party in L.A. "Just wait till I get him on the phone again."

The very next day, at the Fox press tour session for 24, Sutherland spilled the beans about that follow-up phone call. "She was quite cross," he said, turning to co-star Clarke, who was sitting on stage with Sutherland and several other cast members. "She phoned me this morning when she found out that you and I had been kissing and she's coming after both of us."

The edge-of-your-seat thriller, which just won a Golden Globe award as TV's top drama, is set to roar into the second half of the season tonight at 9 p.m. on Global and 24. Besides Jack and Nina's unlikely twist, Sherry Palmer (Penny Johnson Jerald) is back as 24's resident Lady Macbeth, the disgraced wife of president Palmer (Dennis Haysbert).

"Every time I pick up the script, I'm looking at, 'Oh my God, she's doing what?' " Johnson Jerald told critics earlier this month.

Later, after the Fox session, she slipped me her manager's phone number. "You're going to want to call me after (tonight's) episode airs," she said.

Sounds like president Palmer is in big trouble, which is good news for Haysbert. There were too many shots of him just glaring at his brother this fall. It's time for Palmer to kick it up a notch.

The tall, soft-spoken actor told me that he will miss Wendy Crewson, who played his doctor/girlfriend earlier this season. Haysbert is just the latest in a long line of people who fall instantly in love with the Canadian actress. "If she had stayed another week, I would have proposed," Haysbert said.

Guess Crewson's hubby, actor Michael Murphy, is used to it.

Sutherland was easy to spot at the Fox party -- follow the cigarette smoke. The actor was pumped about the second half of the season. Three years into the run of the series, Sutherland, who is also an executive producer, stands to cash in big now that 24 is being shopped for future syndication.

Last summer, he found time to shoot the upcoming feature Taking Lives opposite Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke. "I never felt so welcome by a film cast in all my life," he told me, adding that Jolie was probably, "the smartest person I've ever met."

A typical Canuck in Hollywood, he still plays shinny Sunday nights and, with the addition to the cast of James Badge Dale as his junior partner at the agency, now has a former Junior B goalie between the pipes.

He's still hoping to get his pet project, a CBC miniseries about the life and times of his grandfather, NDP founder Tommy Douglas, off the ground. Sutherland, who spoke passionately about his grandfather's contribution to Canada's medicare system, feared the CBC might want to get going on the project sooner rather than later. With his commitment to 24, he might have to stand aside and let some other actor play the political icon.

A CBC spokesman said yesterday that the project is still in the early planning stages. Sounds like the CBC will wait for Sutherland, which is as it should be.