Dorothy Rabinowitz writes a nice appreciation of 24:

Critics who found a political slant in the series—some suggested that Jack Bauer’s triumphs encouraged torture of terror suspects, and that the show inflamed anti-Muslim sentiments—weren’t much appeased when the producers responded, midway through the series, by avoiding plots about Islamic terror operations and focused instead on lethal threats from the Chinese, from Mexicans drug lords and, everywhere, Russians. All, to be sure, with some greed-crazed American operator at the heart of each threat, to even things out racially and ethnically. Still, the show never quite reformed enough to satisfy those critics.