’24’ is coming back

Fox

You just can’t keep a good Jack Bauer down. In one of the oddest announcements out of TV land, Fox is going back to the well with one of their most popular shows of all time. No, not Arrested Development – the network is bringing 24 back from the grave with a new twelve-episode season.

When 24 first premiered in November of 2001, it was perfectly timed to catch the terror-scare zeitgeist of post-9/11 America. Jack Bauer was a fascinating protagonist, willing to bend the rules in seriously twisted ways in order to bring the bad guys in. As a result, he lost everything in his life he cared about, got addicted to drugs, imprisoned in China, et cetera. The series brought in diminishing returns as it continued, with each plotline becoming more and more unbelievable and contrived (remember when they detonated a nuke in Los Angeles?). By the end of the show’s eighth and final season, Jack almost kicked off World War Three and got himself on both America and Russia’s Most Wanted lists.

His story was supposed to continue in a theatrical movie, but that got canned and star Kiefer Sutherland moved on to Touch, a seriously stinky show about an autistic kid and numbers or something that got cancelled this season. Now that he’s free and Fox needs some serious ratings magic, they’ve made the choice to bring 24 back starting next summer. Fox’s chairman Kevin Reilly confirmed it in a conference call, according to TVLine,

One can only assume that the proposed plotline for the movie will be played out in this new season, which is subtitled “Live Another Day,” but why only 12 episodes? According to Fox, they will still cover 24 hours, just skipping some, which sort of misses the point of the whole series. Honestly, though, the “real-time” gimmick got old by the show’s third season, so I won’t be sad to see that part go. What do you think? Does Jack Bauer still have what it takes to save the world in a post-Bieber America?