'24'

Filling the screen with images reminiscent of “Hotel Rwanda” and “Blood Diamond” and an even grimmer and sick-at-heart Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), "24" prepares to retake its position on American television with “Redemption,” a two-hour prequel to Season 7.

A victim of the writers strike, the show that tapped into America's post-9/11 paranoia and turned baby-faced Sutherland into the world's most unlikely emo-action hero, has been gone for nearly 18 months, or several million episodes in "24's" infamous real-time format. Rest assured, no one has been idle. (Sutherland, for his part, kept the show in the headlines by getting arrested and actually serving time for drunk driving, though this was probably not the kind of talking point Fox was looking for.) The forced hiatus was, after all, only one of "24's" problems. As Season 6 pinballed to a close in spring 2007, even die-hard fans were complaining about repetitive story lines and worn-out love triangles. (Honestly, is there nothing worse than a worn-out love triangle?)

"Redemption," a bridge to next season, which begins Jan. 11, nukes those criticisms from the very first scene. With a narrative that is ambitious and gut-wrenching even by "24" standards, Bauer (Sutherland) finds himself in Sangala, Africa, which is on the verge of a military coup of the sort now only too recognizable. (Why he could not have fled to Paris, or even New Zealand, is a question only Jack and his writers can answer.) There is a psychotic general in a requisite psychotic-general beret, a brutal rebel army touting machine guns and machetes, and a group of now agonizingly iconic child soldiers: boys and young men kidnapped and psychologically bludgeoned to make them capable of slaughtering "the cockroaches."

The world has changed in many ways since the end of Season 6, and executive producer Howard Gordon seems to have taken to heart the criticism the U.S. government has received over the use of torture. This doesn't mean there are no scenes of torture. Of course there are. It's "24." It's just not the Americans who are committing it.

The Counter Terrorist Unit has, in fact, been disbanded and is currently under investigation. While his perpetual emotional turmoil does not seem to include regret over using excessive force, Jack has fled the United States in an effort to evade a subpoena. It catches up with him, in mythical Sangala, where he is doing quasi-missionary work with his old special ops buddy Carl (Robert Carlyle), who runs a school for boys.