From the televised Kenyan street parties in the wake of Obama’s triumph to the squabbling contestants on the latest season of Survivor, to the kiddie cartoon Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and the sun-dappled setting of videogame Far Cry 2, Africa is all over the pop-cultural map. So, it follows that a zeitgeist-based series like 24 would reboot itself in the savannah.
Redemption — the two-hour prequel to 24’s forthcoming seventh season, which launches in January — adheres to 24’s real-time structure: aside from a temporal cheat with the intro, the TV movie occurs between 3pm and 5pm. Otherwise, it’s almost unrecognizable as an episode of 24. Gone are the show’s terror-era underpinnings, replaced with an emotionally wrenching post-Bush storyline about child soldiers in Africa, where Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is hiding from a potential trial for torturing a prisoner.
Bauer’s settled in the faux-nation of Sangala, where his former special-forces friend (Scottish actor Robert Carlyle) is running a boy’s school targeted by a warlord seeking more “soldiers” for his coup. Though as violent as ever, the showdown looks like minimalist mayhem compared to 24’s usual hi-tech battles.
Meanwhile, back in the States: it’s inauguration day and a left-wing woman (Cherry Jones) is replacing a right-wing president (Powers Boothe). The two spar over what the US should do in Sangala — the outgoing commander-in-chief says no natural resources means no reason to intervene; the president-elect wants to avert genocide. We also meet an arms dealer (Jon Voight) who orchestrated the coup and will be the new season’s initial big baddie.
The infamously conservative 24 hasn’t completely changed its political stripes. A UN aid worker is a cartoonishly cowardly Frenchman (at one point Bauer orders him to “go hide in the shelter with the other children”; the aid worker promptly does) and the U.S. embassy employee trying to bring Bauer in is portrayed as a soulless bureaucrat.
Yet the shift in global focus and sympathies suggest that 24 has taken the time to realign itself in order for the series to matter in the upcoming Age of Obama.
24: REDEMPTION AIRS NOVEMBER 23, 8PM ON GLOBAL/FOX.
“Let Not Mankind Bogart Love”
Speaking of the Age of Obama, now that a Marxist secret Muslim is heading to the White House, you’d figure that Bill O’Reilly’s War on Christmas is finally over. Well, not if Stephen Colbert has anything to rant about it.
Many have wondered how both Colbert’s and Jon Stewart’s comedic opposition will fare without a right-wing status quo to oppose. Colbert has already increased his reliance on sketch-like digressions — such as selling his sperm to England in the form of his “Formula 40U1: Earl of Cumbria” line. That technique reaches its logical apotheosis with the inspired lunacy of the meta-pundit’s musical holiday special, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!
There’s little political rhetoric to the special — aside from a pro-Christmas ditty in which the jingoistic country star Toby Keith croons “separate church and state/ that’s what some liberal said/ I say we separate him from his head.” Instead, Colbert relies on his on-camera quirks — fear of bears, love of Leslie Feist, an actually pretty awesome singing voice — to parody old-timey Christmas shows.
Trapped in a snowy log cabin by a marauding grizzly, and wearing a fetching turtleneck-cardigan combo, Colbert duets on original songs with visitors like Willie Nelson’s stoned Wise Man and Feist’s prayer-line operator (“Please be patient, an angel will be with you shortly”). Also, forest ranger John Legend sings a spicy love song (“serving eggnog without nutmeg is like serving a turkey with a duck and a chicken inside it”) and, of course, “late-night basic cable’s” Jon Stewart offers a Hanukkah chanson (“It lasts for seven — no, for you, eight nights”).
By the time everyone joins together with Elvis Costello to croon “(What’s So Funny ’bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” we have ourselves a new, blissfully absurd Christmas classic. At the very least, this one-off music special should prevent Stephen from losing another Emmy to Barry Manilow.
A COLBERT CHRISTMAS AIRS NOV 23, 9PM ON CTV AND 10PM ON COMEDY NETWORK.