"24" Return Date!

Drop it! Your mouse, that is, and check this out. Fox has announced that Jack Bauer's seventh very bad day will kick off with a two-night, four-hour event, airing Sunday, Jan. 11, and Monday, Jan. 12, 2009.

What's more, the series will mark its 150th episode (and approximately its 10,000th ejected shell casing) with the second hour of the aforementioned Monday broadcast.Having been off the air since May 21, 2007 (due to last winter's WGA strike), 24 actually will first return with a two-hour movie bridging Seasons 6 and 7, airing Nov. 23.Come January, Day 7 will get underway with Jack on trial before the government for his assorted "questionable" world-saving tactics.

That bit of bureaucracy is thankfully interrupted when news surfaces that someone from Jack's past — someone who's dead, to be exact — turns up very much alive. (Look at me deftly dance around that year-old "spoiler"!)Among Season 7's new cast members, Cherry Jones is the freshly installed Madame President (and she's rather terrific, if the two-hour movie is any sign) and Jon Voight is the big baddie.

Source: TV Guide