New role for Kiefer Sutherland

Kiefer Sutherland stars in a new Sky 1 series, the highly anticipated new drama ‘Touch’ – his first television project since 24 – launches on Sky 1 HD and Sky 1 on March 13th at 8pm.

Kiefer Sutherland plays Martin Bohm, a former newspaper reporter who has bounced from job to job trying to care for his son, Jake (David Mazouz).  Jake has been left in his sole care after the death of his wife in the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Jake does not speak, nor will he allow anyone to touch him. He spends hours and hours writing repetitive numerical sequences and playing with old cell phones his father, Kiefer Sutherland,  brings home from his current job as an airport baggage handler.

Viewers, however, do get to hear Jake speak. In voiceover he tells us of his belief in the interconnectedness of the world and all the people and things in it. The numbers that he is obsessed with – writing them down on paper, laying them out in popcorn kernels on the floor, programming them into the lost cellphones his dad brings home from work.

“Touch” operates on the mind-blowing premise that people around the world are linked to one another and their lives intersect — with potentially major repercussions — as a result of numeric patterns. These patterns are indecipherable to most of us but not to Jake, a seemingly autistic 10-year-old boy.

The series co-stars veteran Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon) as a professor and expert on gifted children who works alongside Martin in deciphering the meaning of Jake’s visions; and British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw (JJ Abrams’ Undercovers) as a social worker who works with Martin as they learn that Jake can see things and patterns that connect unrelated events.

“Touch” will launch on Tuesday 13th March 2012 at 8pm on Sky 1 HD and on the move with Sky Go.

Martin (Kiefer Sutherland) wants to help son Jake (David Mazouz), who does not talk, in “Touch.”

Photo: Richard Foreman / Fox (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/23/DDAS1MSQGR.DTL)