Bourne on TV: How much is USA's 'Treadstone' like the Matt Damon films?

Any fan of "The Bourne Identity" film franchise knows that Treadstone is the CIA black-ops program that produced Matt Damon's amnesiac super-assassin, Jason Bourne.

USA Network's "Treadstone," which premieres Tuesday, takes that nightmarish operation and all of its unexpected consequences to the small screen, charting the brainwashing program from its beginnings in the 1970s to a shocking present-day reawakening.

Viewers won't see Bourne (or Damon), but there are plenty of fingerprints connecting the 10-episode action thriller (Tuesdays, 10 EDT/PDT) to the five feature films – four starring Damon and one featuring Jeremy Renner as another turbocharged operative – and to the novels of Robert Ludlum, who created the iconic character.

"Treadstone as an organization did give birth to Jason Bourne," executive producer Ben Smith says of a story – and undercover program – that bears familiar "Bourne" traits of international intrigue, unceasing duplicity and plenty of hand-to-hand combat. But it takes the saga in a new direction.

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"The idea was (that) this is such a great sandbox. What else can we build in here?" says Smith, a producer of the "Bourne" films.

Here's where "Treadstone" parallels and diverges from the "Bourne" films and novels:

Past threats, present troubles

"Treadstone" lives in two timelines, exploring the Cold War origins of the secret, extralegal assassination program laid out in Ludlum's 1980 novel, "The Bourne Identity," while dealing with its harsh repercussions today.

In 1973, J. Randolph Bentley (Jeremy Irvine), an early operative imprisoned in East Germany, struggles against competing Soviet mind-control efforts overseen by a ruthless KGB operative with the help of an ex-Nazi scientist.

He escapes, showing a resourcefulness that would make Bourne – as well as James Bond and MacGyver – proud, while struggling to figure out what happened to him. The initial plot parallels Damon's amnesiac character, who had recovered his memory by Damon's most recent appearance in 2016's "Jason Bourne."

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In the present day, the Treadstone project, shut down in the "Bourne" films, roars back to life, appearing to have spread beyond the CIA. "It was bigger than we thought," one CIA boss says.

Bentley's highly trained Treadstone descendants, stationed all over the world, are waking from psychological slumber, getting involved in punishing fights and taking on dangerous assignments with skills they didn't know they had.

A puzzled CIA officer (Michelle Forbes) tries to figure out why the sleeper agents, called cicadas because of their seeming hibernation, have been activated – and by whom. 

Bourne-free

Since "Treadstone" doesn't have the singular Bourne/Damon, it introduces a smorgasbord of undercover operatives – including a North Korean piano teacher who's a mom (Hyo-Joo Han), an oil-rig worker in Alaska (Brian J. Smith) and a waitress in India (Shruti Haasan) – who are jolted into action.  

A London cab driver (Tracy Ifeachor) – whose journalistic career was short-circuited after she reported on a missing Soviet-era nuclear missile – is drawn into action when the missile's whereabouts become newly relevant. She shows great skill evading North Korean killers during a Parisian car chase that pays homage to Bourne, even if she's not a Treadstone agent.

"She's a taxi driver in London," Smith jokes, suggesting a different kind of exacting training.

A worldwide perspective    

"Treadstone" continues the international outlook of the "Bourne" films and is set largely in visually rich European cities. Primary filming took place in Budapest, Hungary, but the series travels to Amsterdam, Paris, London, Greece, India, Africa, Taiwan, South Korea and Colombia, Smith says. 

Executive producer Tim Kring created "Heroes," and the far flung, ethnically diverse operatives of "Treadstone" may remind viewers of the 2006-10 NBC series, which followed people with superhuman abilities who popped up all over the world.   

"The fact that he did create this global world within 'Heroes' was a super interesting and compelling reason for us to work together on 'Treadstone,' " Smith says.

Fight club expansion

"Treadstone" picks up the "Bourne" fighting mantle in tightly edited, highly choreographed one-on-one battles.

Damon's Jason Bourne was a one-man killing machine; fisticuffs here are equal opportunity as a diverse group shows off martial arts skills. In one episode, two middle-aged women gut punch age and gender stereotypes in a battle to the death.

"We took out the conventional thinking in terms of who can participate in a fight and had a lot of fun with that," Smith says.

Bourne world forecast: Permanent gray

Espionage and skullduggery, with brainwashed assassins in the middle, create the murkiest of moral environments in the "Bourne" films, in which Jason kills coldly but later feels guilt. There's a similar vibe in "Treadstone," in which the operatives, including Patrick Fugit's conflicted math teacher Stephen Haynes, are programmed to kill.

"We don't really have good guys or bad guys. People do bad things, but according to them, their actions are completely justified," Smith says. "But we also play out the consequences of a lot of these decisions."