Posted at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 7

24
7 p.m. Sunday and Monday, Fox
Tune in or out? out of four.

It’s been almost two years since “24” aired a complete season, just enough time for the writers to come up with a new way to test Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland): The super agent faces down a Senate committee investigating abuses of power and use of unlawful methods—torture, that is—by the disbanded Counter-Terrorist Unit.

“Do not sit there with that smug look on your face and expect me to regret the decisions that I have made,” a defiant Bauer tells a committee member, “because, sir, the truth is I don’t.”

By the end of the first four hours of Season 7 (over two nights), even the staunchest Dove is likely to agree with Bauer.

He’s once again tossed into a ridiculously impossible mission in which baddies are plotting to harm America. FBI agent Renee Walker (Annie Wersching) springs him from the Senate hearings and pleads for help to stop his presumed-dead fellow former agent, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), who has kidnapped a computer whiz and hacked into a government computer system that controls air traffic, water supplies and electrical grids.

It’s familiar territory for Bauer and viewers. But “24” knows how to put its audience in a choke-hold. There are more plot twists and murky machinations in the first hour of “24” than there are prisoners held (unjustly?) by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay. And although CTU is gone, all our favorite characters return, including brainiac Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and former CTU boss Bill Buchanan (James Morrison).

After setting “24” in L.A. for six years (not including last fall’s TV movie, “24: Redemption”), the series benefits from its move to Washington, D.C. All the players—a female president (Cherry Jones), her paranoid husband (Colm Feore), FBI computer geek Janis Gold (Janeane Garolfalo) and several evil-doers—are within Bauer’s reach.

New setting aside, don’t expect to believe that familiar announcement before each episode that claims “events occur in real time.” In order to enjoy Bauer’s 24-hour adventures, you can’t cling to reality.

Just let every implausible, nail-biting minute rock your Monday nights.

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