I just watched 24: Redemption. It apparently bridges the gap between Season 6 and Season 7 (yet to be shown). Now I've only seen seasons 1 to 4 but I didn't seem to be missing any vital information needed to understand this latest installment.

Jack still talks in a hoarse whisper all the time for no particular reason. He still seems to operate a shoot-on-sight policy for anyone who looks even slightly like they might be trouble later in the episode.

In this one-off TV movie we find Jack keeping a low profile in a children's school in the (presumably) fictional African country of Sengala. He's just about to move on to pastures new when it all kicks off — local militia recruiting boy soldiers for a bloody coup — and Jack has to intervene.

Robert Carlyle plays the guy who runs the school but for some reason he's doing an Irish accent. I can understand British actors having to do an American accent in an American production, but if he's just a random English-speaking Johnny European, why not make him Scottish?

Anyway, despite lots of gunplay it's actually all rather pedestrian stuff, created I think to keep the public's appetite at least partially whetted for the arrival of Season 7, which was delayed by the writer's strike.

And as it all wraps up on screen it occurs to me that Jack Bauer has been reduced to a kind of Littlest Hobo but with the addition of deadly force, wandering from town to town cleaning up other people's messes as he goes, but reluctant to stay in one place for too long.

So here's my suggestion for a theme for the next season of 24 to be sung to the tune of the Littlest Hobo:

The Littlest Hobauer

There's a voice, that keeps on calling me
Serve your country, whatever the cost might be

Every stop I make, I find a new deadly situation
You've no idea, how far I'm willing to go, to acquire your cooperation

Maybe tomorrow, the world won't need Jack Bauer
Until tomorrow, there'll be a cliffhanger every hour

(repeats)