It's not a secret that one of Fox's most talked about shows had a disastrous season last year.

The ticking clock on "24" had broken, and fans and critics alike had a field day.

"We all took that really personally, and I think [executive producer Howard Gordon] and I and [director/co-executive producer] Jon Cassar -- we talked about it, and we felt that some of them were very fair and legitimate," said the show's star, Kiefer Sutherland.

In season 6, terrorists invaded the offices of the Counter Terrorist Unit, and devoted fans thought the story became muddled, unrealistic and, at times, downright silly.

Then, to add insult to injury, a debilitating writers strike late in 2007 forced the show to shut down before the start of the seventh season, a move that would end up scuttling the series' entire year.

Now the thrill ride about a federal agent fighting global terrorism is back, and begins anew with a two-hour movie, "24: Redemption," which bridges the gap between last season and the new one that begins in January. And fans hope the show's character, Jack Bauer, isn't all that is redeemed.

The movie takes place months after the end of the last season with Bauer (Sutherland) hiding from federal authorities in Africa where he's helping a friend (Robert Carlyle) run a local school in a village.

But trouble is brewing as a future dictator plans a military coup, intending to recruit children as soldiers by kidnapping them and forcing them to train with guns.

The villain sets his sights on students at a school but Bauer and his friend intervene and try to help the students escape -- after taking out the henchman in the process, of course. Like the series, the movie is told in real time over a two-hour period.

Carlyle, who plays Bauer's friend and a fellow special ops agent from the past, spent nearly a month shooting the film on location in Africa, a decision he said was costly but crucial.

"You got authenticity," he said about shooting in Cape Town, South Africa, instead of in a Hollywood studio. "It looks right. No matter [how you dress] a studio in a backlot, it's not going to look like Africa. Africa is a character in this piece."

Meanwhile, the movie's second storyline involves the swearing in of a new female U.S. president (Cherry Jones), and a corrupt government official played by Oscar winner Jon Voight who is overseeing the coup in Africa, a character who will bleed into the new season.

"The show has always been one of my favorite shows on television, and I knew that the people were good and the quality of the pieces are very good, so I wasn't at risk with it," said Voight (who won Best Actor for "Coming Home") about his first foray into series television. "And then to create a character from the beginning to the end like this is a lot of fun."

While the new season of "24" may have hit a roadblock over a writers strike that nearly ground the industry to a halt, it offered one advantage -- time to get things right, Sutherland said.

"It will be the first time we've been able to complete 24 episodes before one will air, and I think that has allowed us to really take our time to work those dangerous episodes for us, which are 13, 14, 15 and 16," he said. "The first 12 and the last eight for us generally are really strong. [But] it's that transition area -- we have a lot of time to work on it."