Karl Rove nor Summer Glau got the TV critics' blood going today quite like Kiefer Sutherland.

Maybe that was because the Fox News panel and the "Terminator" panel were up on the big ballroom stage, while "24" star Sutherland and his producers and co-stars were simply set loose in the foyer, forcing reporters into major-league scrums to learn what we could about the seventh season of the real-time thriller, which launches in January.

But you don't have to wait until then to see Jack Bauer in action. The two-hour prequel "24: Exile" just finished three weeks of shooting in South Africa and Washington D.C., and will air Oct. 23 on Fox. Its real-time action finds Cherry Jones being inaugurated as America's first female president, while in the fictional African nation of Sangala, Sutherland's super agent  Jack Bauer tries to save a school full of children from a bloody civil conflict. The action will also set up the regular 24-episode season beginning in January, by which time Jack will be back in Washington.

It was a big change from the previous six seasons, when Bauer had to stay close to his home base in L.A., thanks to the real-time format.

"It was fantastic," said Sutherland. "When he left at the end of Season Six, he was so disillusioned by not only with what he'd done with his life but with the circumstances he confronted here in America, that there was something wonderful with the beginning of show in Africa, that he had actually found a kind of peace and a calm there with (guest star Robert Carlyle) as an old friend of his from special forces 15 years ago.

"Bobby's character had started a school that was trying to provide a safe haven and rehabilitate the children of the African wars, children that had been involved in the fighting, many of those children ranging in age from 8 to 13. It was the first time you saw (Jack) in a place where he felt like he was giving back for a lot of things where he felt like he had been a part of the problem. This was an opportunity for him to kind of clean himself. Not only on a physical level, but on an emotional level, it was a nice fresh start for him."

Producer Jon Cassar said the show begins shooting in May for a season that begins the following January. So between May 2007 and the start of the writers strike in November, "24" completed about a dozen episodes of the seventh season which was supposed to launch in January 2008. Like "American Idol," "24 " is always launched in January to avoid disruption by Fox's telecast of the baseball playoffs.

But the strike interrupted production, meaning a mid-season break would be required if it launched as scheduled. And Fox wanted the season to air uninterrupted, which has meant noticeably better ratings for "24" and other serialized shows like "Lost."  So, Cassar said, the decision to postpone the launch until January 2009 was made "very quickly, like the day after the strike started."

The "24" brain trust and Fox were both eager for the show to get something on the air during the more than 18-month gap between seasons. And the prequel served a dual purpose, Sutherland said.

"(Producer) Howard Gordon had started the show in Africa at the beginning of Season Seven originally, but what he and the writers could never figure out was whether we could disrupt the real time aspect of the show to get (Jack) out of Africa and back to the United States," Sutherland said. "We would literally have to say 16 hours later, and no one felt good about that, so we ended up having to scrap that storyline which we all loved so much. So the prequel was a fantastic opportunity to do that storyline and set everything else up with that."

Source: http://blog.meevee.com/my_weblog/2008/07/24-goes-to-afri.html