'Treadstone' Brings the Bourne Black-Ops Universe to Television

Jason Bourne has devoted his (movie) life to destroying the CIA program that programmed him as an espionage-focused killing machine. The new USA Network series "Treadstone" (airing Tuesday nights at 10pm ET) reveals that, despite Jason's best efforts, there's always been more than one spy program and he wasn't the only operative created by scientific experiment.

"Treadstone" follows the CIA's black-ops Cicada program, based on sleeper agent protocols created in the Eastern Bloc and exported to the rest of the world when an American agent subjected to its techniques busts out and returns to the USA.

Fans of his old NBC series "Heroes" will recognize the style that creator Tim Kring brings to "Treadstone." We meet individual "cicadas" -- sleeper spies who don't remember their training and who are living normal lives as they wait to be activated for a mission.

Doug McKenna (played by Brian J. Smith), Soyun (Hyo Joo Han) and Stephen Haynes (Patrick Fugit) are all cicadas who are being activated. Tara Coleman (Tracy Ifeachor) is a journalist who is investigating the cicadas, and Matt Edwards (Omar Metwally) and Ellen Becker (Michelle Forbes) are CIA agents who learn of the program and are determined to expose it.

The series also features a throwback plotline to 1973 when American agent Randolph Bentley (Jeremy Irvine) escapes from a Berlin lab and brings news of the program back to his American handlers.

USA provided four episodes for preview and it's obvious that unconnected story lines are aiming towards a big unifying reveal. You'll have to watch to find out whether that reveal comes at the end of this ten-episode season or gets kicked to season two (or three) by a cliffhanger.

We've got a background clip from USA that gives background on Jeremy Irvine's character Bentley and shows off some of the superior fight scenes choreographed by stunt coordinator Buster Reeves.