Jonathan Storm: '24' returns with prequel to 7th season

Jack is back, and all's right with the world, which means that in Fox's

24

, it's a complete mess, and only one man can possibly save it.

But in Sunday night's movie, which is called 24: Redemption (and not 2, which would be the logical choice, since it's two hours long), Jack Bauer doesn't have time to save the whole world, so he'll do his best with a bunch of refugee kids and an old pal who runs an African school where they live.

It's a "prequel" to the seventh season of the regular series, but you could watch it as a stand-alone, though it's hard to imagine not coming back in January to join what the Fox announcer accurately calls "television's greatest thrill ride." (He also calls it "the most critically acclaimed series on television," but one out of two ain't bad. After all, it is Fox.)

The movie begins at 8 p.m., and, like the regular show, each season of which makes up one nearly apocalyptic day, it supposedly runs in real time, though by now we've all gotten used to the 24 definition of "real time," where people can teleport 35 miles through Los Angeles traffic in 25 seconds.

It's 3 p.m. in Sangala, a fictional African country, or a region in the country of Africa, if you think like some political candidates who wouldn't get very far in the extreme global distress of 24, most of which, like so much real global distress, is caused by crafty, secretive business types who'll do anything for money.

This time around, Jon Voight plays the head craftician. "He's a bad boy," Voight says in a video interview sent to critics along with a DVD of the show. "This guy's a bad dude."

And when 24 begins in earnest again, with a four-hour - need we say "explosive"? - extravaganza on Jan. 4 and 5, there will be a new president, too, played by Cherry Jones. You may not know her, but she has won two Tonys as best lead actress on Broadway, for the 1995 revival of The Heiress and for Doubt in 2005.

She certainly understands the show: "You know, it's 24, so every time the door opens or the phone rings, it just gets worse and worse and worse."

Everybody went to South Africa to shoot Redemption, in which we catch up with Jack after he's been wandering the world trying to forget all the horrible things he has done in the name of justice, and also to evade the authorities, whose ideas about his outrageously illegal tactics have evolved, and who want to make a spectacle of him, if not inflict more sorrow on him.

Alas, a ruthless general is starting a coup, and he needs to round up lots and lots of little-boy soldiers to help, and there's a nice cache of them where Jack is staying.

He has not lost his mojo in the off-season. He battles a herd of revolutionaries with just three sticks of dynamite and a pistol, and fails to crack under excruciating torture that would kill you or me, but is an almost hourly occurrence in each of his horrendous days.

Things are all wrapped up, at least temporarily, by 5 p.m., leaving dozens dead and us with little inclination to mourn them, as we wait for another thrill ride of a whole day to begin.

Television

24: Redemption

8 p.m. Sunday on Fox29