Welcome to D.C., Jack Bauer

-- WASHINGTON Early one cold November morning, actress Annie Wersching leads Kiefer Sutherland to an armored SUV with dark windows parked outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture building.

After director Brad Turner yells "cut," onlookers snap photos of the star. Sutherland spots a participant in a charity run for Lupus on the Washington Mall and comments, "Why is that guy wearing shorts? It's cold."

Where Sutherland normally works, people wear shorts year-round. Welcome to Washington, Jack Bauer.

A little more than a year ago, Sutherland and the crew of his popular Fox TV series, "24," came to the nation's capital to film segments of the show's seventh season. The completion of that season was delayed a year by the Writers Guild strike, but it finally makes its debut in a two-night premiere beginning tonight at 8.

Jack Bauer actually returned to the screen in November in the Fox TV movie "24: Redemption," a series prequel that was set in Africa. Now, the series' new season begins with the intrepid agent for the fictional federal Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) forced to return to Washington to face a Senate investigation into his conduct.

After six years of making "24" mainly in Los Angeles, the production thought it was finally time to take the show to the home of oft-seen presidents in the series.

Shooting in Washington lends the show a sense of realism impossible to produce by simply intercutting stock plate shots of D.C. with scenes shot in Hollywood. "To have the Washington Monument in the background of a drive-up, and in a simple, incidental way, just tells you you're in Washington," explains cinematographer Rodney Charters. "That's a pretty hard thing to fake."

Turner and his crew searched the season's early scripts for opportunities to make use of recognizable Washington locales. "It was a matter of finding moments to get scenes on the street, and do it naturally so that it's seamless," the director says. Adds Sutherland, "If you can take advantage of getting iconic places like the Capitol or the Lincoln Memorial in a shot, you try and do that. It's like a postcard for us."

Yet doing so isn't a simple matter of setting up a camera and taking pictures, particularly in a security-sensitive city such as Washington. Simply put, "Washington D.C. is the most difficult city in the United States to film in," said local location manager John Latenser.

But for the actors, it's worth all the trouble. "You're constantly aware you're in a capital city," says Sutherland. "You can feel the power of it, the sense of responsibility that's in the air all the time. Somehow it felt like more was at stake."