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Clock On '24' Won't Resume Ticking Until Next Year

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A Tribune staff and wire report

Published: February 18, 2008

Fans of the Fox drama "24" will have to wait until January to see Jack Bauer again. The show is this season's most prominent casualty of the writers strike.

The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and was planning to start last month. But if it had started airing new episodes soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show high-profile programs.

Even though eight episodes for this season had been filmed before the strike, producers would have had to ramp up production soon to complete the season.

A January start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said.

The company that produces the series, 20th Century Fox Television, also confirmed that creator Joel Surnow was leaving as one of the executive producers.

Surnow told Daily Variety that he had "decided it was time to see if there were other opportunities I wanted to pursue."

CBS ANNOUNCES PLANS: CBS is the first network out of the gate with a post-strike lineup, one that will bring nearly all of its scripted series - from "CSI" to "How I Met Your Mother" - back to the airwaves.

The network will gradually rebuild its regular lineup, starting with the Monday comedies "How I Met Your Mother, "The Big Bang Theory" and "Two and a Half Men," which are set to return March 17. Dramas will move back to their spots over the following three weeks, with "CSI: Miami" the first to return March 24.

All returning shows will produce at least four new episodes, and in the case of the Monday comedies as many as nine (the exception being "Rules of Engagement," which will air four new episodes in April and May after "The New Adventures of Old Christine" finishes its run). "CSI: Miami" will produce eight new shows. "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds" will do seven apiece.

There's no word on "The Unit," which is on hiatus while CBS airs a winter run of "Big Brother," or "Cane," which completed its initial 13-episode run in December.

"Shark" will go back into production for four episodes, but its return date isn't nailed down. The new drama "Swingtown," which hasn't been scheduled yet, will also resume production.

YOU GO, "GIRLFRIENDS": The CW comedy "Girlfriends," the longest-running live-action comedy on network television, is ending after eight seasons, the show's creator announced.

The series about three friends navigating life and love has been a linchpin of The CW's Monday lineup and was previously on UPN. Star Tracee Ellis Ross earned six consecutives NAACP Image Award nominations as best comic actress, winning once.

"Girlfriends" is the second-highest rated series with a predominantly black cast, behind "The Game." The only such show to produce more episodes was "The Cosby Show."

Mara Brock Akil, the show's creator, said in a statement that she was grateful to the "Girlfriends" audience, particularly black women, for seeking the series out each Monday.

Akil said she is in talks with The CW to put together a retrospective show about the series.

The show's return this season was in doubt, so much so that Akil wrote a final episode where Ross' character, Joan, finally gets a marriage proposal after some tough years for her love life.

DENISE GETS REAL: Add "cable network unscripted-series star" to "The World Is Not Enough" and "Scary Movie 3" in Denise Richards' list of credits.

The actress has signed on to star in an unscripted series for E! that will follow her as she resets her life following her very public and vitriolic divorce from actor Charlie Sheen. The still-untitled show is set to premiere in the summer.

"At the core of this series is a resilient single mom who is trying to get her life back on track," says Lisa Berger, who heads up series development for the cable channel. "The show will give viewers an inside look at what it's like for Denise to go through these ups and downs while always in the public eye."

The series comes from Ryan Seacrest Productions, with Richards and Seacrest serving as executive producers. E! promises the show will delve into Richards' travails as a single mother to two children and chronicle what happens when her father moves in with her, among other things.

Seacrest, who's the on-air face of E! in addition to the host of "American Idol," also produces the network's show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."

In addition to her "Scary Movie" role and James Bond movie "The World Is Not Enough" (for which she was recently named in a British newspaper poll as worst Bond girl ever), Richards' credits include "Starship Troopers," "Wild Things," the UPN series "Sex, Love and Secrets" and the ABC Family flick "I Do (But I Don't)." She has two films, "Jolene" and "Deep in the Valley," scheduled for release this year.

Information from The Associated Press and Zap2It was used in this report.

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