Upcoming USA series Treadstone set in the world of sleeper spies
By Grant Butler
Bourne franchise TV show, Treadstone, has found its two leads.
USA’s New TV series Treadstone will explore the background of the CIA program known as Operation Treadstone, a program that uses conditioning to turn people into assassins with tremendous abilities that border on superhuman. The series is an offshoot of Universal’s Bourne franchise and season one will take place as unsuspecting sleepers are activated to fulfill their assigned tasks.
Treadstone has a lot in common with many recent spy movies about sleeper agents who are given their true assignment and lose their cover in one way or another. The Angelina Jolie film Salt was about a very similar concept, although that film’s premise was centered on a KGB sleeper program instead of a CIA one.
The show will also probably be quite similar to The Americans, the hit series that just finished on FX. It was the story of two KGB agents who assume the guise of a married American couple. This is significant because the two KGB agents were introduced to each other by their American aliases only because not knowing anything about each other’s Russian background meant there was less chance for either an unintentional slip-up or a deliberate betrayal.
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It’s fair to expect Treadstone to touch on similar points because a sleeper agent is the ideal asset because they can be virtually turned on and off at will. It’s also important to note that since the sleeper has no memory of what’s happening, that means they can’t turn against their handlers and give important information to the enemy.
The series also seems faintly reminiscent of the movie Red Sparrow. The film was based on a best-selling spy novel and starred Jennifer Lawrence as a ballerina who found herself immersed in the world of intelligence and spycraft.
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Treadstone has cast Jeremy Irvine (Mamma Mia 2) and Brian J. Smith (Netflix’s Sense8) as the two leads. The former will be a CIA spy named J. Randolph Bentley who is tasked with eliminating a target before getting pulled into a tangled web of lies. Meanwhile, Smith will be an oil rig worker named Doug Mckenna who discovers some mysterious truths about himself. Combined, the two sound like a mix of the Jason Bourne character.
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Source: Deadline