So China has a home-grown clone of the popular US action drama 24, which follows events in real time, unlocking a mystery over the course of one day.

In China's version, the producers drop the anti-terrorism themes of the original but keep the frequent crises. Described as a science-fiction thriller, it begins as the New Year arrives three minutes early, setting off a chain of increasingly chaotic events - power outages, chemical containment breaches, air traffic control failures, and an impending nuclear disaster - and the heroes naturally have to race against time to prevent global annihilation, or something like that (the short, 70-day production was kept carefully under wraps and only recently showed a 20-minute clip to the media).

Oh, and there's one heck of a gimmick: the 24 episodes of Extreme 24 《非常24小时》 are being broadcast consecutively over an entire day starting at the stroke of midnight on Chinese New Year.

Sina has a comprehensive site with lots of pictures, and you can watch an excerpt here (links below the embedded movie are low- and high- bandwidth versions for each of two clips).