Jack Bauer, the terror of terrorists, foiler of madmen, rule-breaker for the good of the many, and bane of the America-hating psychotics is back. The counter-terrorism professional who loves to talk on a cell phone in a loud, hoarse whisper will be returning to Fox with the series that made him famous: 24.

Fox has decided that 24‘s ending, three years ago, was a bit premature after all. This time, however, 24 won’t be a series, it will be an event series.”

An event series is just TV geek speak for what used to be called a miniseries. So those 24 hours will not be in 24 one-hour episodes. Instead, certain minutes of each hour will be skipped and the whole 24 hours will be crammed into 12 one-hour episodes. This follows suit with a number of high-profile TV shows that only feature 10-13 episodes per season, like Mad Men, Game Of Thrones, and Justified.

Kevin Reilly, Fox Entertainment chairman, spoke about the return of the hit TV show with reporters on a conference call Monday morning. That’s when he confessed that, in the past, 24 utilized about 12 hours of  programing. This means that only during 12 hours of the show did the major, exciting events occur. The rest was nothing more than filler. He further claimed that breaking the show down to 12 hours will be “liberating for us”. Apparently, it will be liberating for the viewers as well.

The new 24 will also have a subtitle: Live Another Day. Unquestionably, fans of the show will be speculating for months about how the subtitle fits in with the plot. However, the producers were good at keeping plot twists a secret during the show’s initial 8-season run, so it’s unlikely that much will be leaked that isn’t intended to be leaked.

Fox’s two famous singing competitions, The X Factor and American Idol, will also be returning next season. Although the ratings for both shows are falling, Fox is not deterred. Each show gets a whopping 15 hours during the prime time weekly slot. X gets its hours in the fall, and Idol in the spring.

Bones is also returning, and will air on Monday nights. It will be followed by a new show called Sleepy Hollow. In that show, the famed literary character Ichabod Crane manages to find himself resurrected in contemporary times – with the world on the brink of destruction. Reilly calls that show “wildly inventive”. It’s going to have to be “wildly inventive” to make that back story work.

Then there is, of course, the perennial attempt by J.J. Abrams to duplicate his success with Lost. This time it’s called Almost Human. It’s the story of a part-machine cop teamed up with a part-human robot.

It appears that Fox, never afraid of attempting originality in programming, is taking some risks this fall. Nielsen will tell us if those risks pay off.