For years, The X-Files was the only television show I watched. It featured some of the best writing on TV in the 1990s. And although the conspiracy eventually fell apart under its own weight (and the small fact that the series' essentially irreplaceable star abandoned the project before it went off the air), The X-Files defined dark, intense, edgy primetime drama. Writer-Producer Frank Spotnitz created the series with Chris Carter, writing many of the darkest conspiracy-arc episodes during the show's run.
Spotnitz' latest project is a brand new Cinemax series, debuting tonight called Hunted. Created with the BBC, the eight-episode drama stars Golden Globe nominee Melissa George (In Treatment) as Sam Hunter. She works for Byzantium, a private intelligence firm led by the enigmatic Rupert Keel (Stephen Dillane, Game of Thrones, John Adams). Byzantium isn't concerned with the moral standing of its clients, turning a blind eye except to the profit margin.
Sam is a skilled, fearless operative, but In the first episode, Sam is badly wounded, left for dead, perhaps betrayed by her own colleagues, including lover Aidan Marsh (Adam Rayner, Hawthorne). When she turns up back in London months later, much to the surprise of Keel and everyone else, she isn't sure of who to trust (if anyone at all).
The plot of Hunted as it unfolds follows Sam's quest to learn why she had been targeted, and also to uncover the true mission of the organization for which she works. Spotnitz explains that as a fan of the espionage genre, he created Hunted as a complex thriller. "I didn’t know," he says in the show's production notes, "that there are actually thousands of these private spy agencies around the world. They draw their personnel largely from special forces and government spy agencies. They are really interesting because their operatives aren’t told who their clients are, and I realized I haven’t seen that before in movies or TV."
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