Another long day for Jack

There may come a day in an Obama presidency when the new president wishes for a man like 24's super-agent Jack Bauer. The former CTU agent, with his preternatural stamina and his miraculous aim, always manages to be one half-step ahead of thugs and terrorists. In 24:Redemption, Jack comes back to kick off another intense, very long day in a two-hour TV movie that airs Nov. 23 on Fox, and which sets the stage for season 7. Like previous seasons, the seventh season will cover one day in Bauer's exciting life, with each hour-long episode happening in real time.

The show opens four years after the last time Bauer saved the world, in a mission school in the fictitious African country of Sangala. Bauer's friend Carl Benton (Robert Carlyle) runs the school, and Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) has sought refuge there from a past that haunts him as well as from a subpoena to stand trial in American court.

But, like so many of Jack Bauer's days, this one is shaping up to be a doozy. A local warlord is raising an army. Mirroring some real African armies, he rampages through the countryside and kidnaps boys, forcing them to take up arms. Some very intense footage shows soldiers forcing a boy, aged around 10, to hack at a man with a machete. When they set their sights on Benton's school, Jack is thrown back into a world of desperate gun battles and frantic escapes.

Over in America, it's inauguration day. The president-elect, Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones), is poised to take the reins of the nation. As the situation in Africa develops into a full-blown crisis, America considers intervening to stop genocide, but weighs action against the cost in American lives and implications on the world stage. Luckily for President Taylor, Bauer is always in the right place at the right time with guns blazing against long odds.