There’s something vaguely aggravating about the idea of a new TV series existing within an expanded Bourne universe, a tiresome concept indicative of so many awful trends refusing to go away. The franchise had already died a death on the big screen after one overwhelmingly dull spin-off (The Bourne Legacy) and one slightly less dull sequel (Jason Bourne) and transporting it to a cable network seems less like ingenuity and more like inevitability. With a few exceptions, film-to-television adaptations have largely felt redundant, and premiering on the USA network, home to some of cable’s least talked-about dramas, Treadstone seemed destined to bring us more of the same. But parkouring its way on to screens with far more vim and purpose than one would expect, Treadstone is a scrappy but stimulating surprise and a refreshingly necessary addition to the saga.

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It begins in early 70s East Berlin with a sequence involving an early Treadstone patient, an American soldier played by War Horse’s Jeremy Irvine, juiced up, brainwashed and ordered to kill on demand. It’s effective enough but did instill a small amount of fear that we would be following a by-the-numbers prequel plot, exploring the origins of a program we might not be that interested in knowing about. But one of the show’s most compelling aspects is its ability to upend expectations at various turns and in the post-title sequence we begin a globe-hop, with an international ensemble tying together an ambitious narrative focusing on what happens when sleeper spies are reactivated years later.

Sometimes the transitions are clumsier than others and the show does suffer from some less-than-gripping episode finales, but the gliding between protagonists and locations mostly works well, constructing a world far more detailed and expansive than one might expect. The “human weapons” are also victims, forced into one precarious scenario after the other, dispatching targets with ruthless efficiency yet not fully aware of where these skills are coming from, and there’s fun to be had watching showrunner Tim Kring play with not just one Bourne but a handful of them. There are some nifty plot reversals and some solid action sequences, even if they do suffer somewhat from the inevitable big-screen comparison. With a tighter budget and mostly style-free direction, there’s a workmanlike quality to the fights, which are fast and violent but undeniably lesser. There’s also a misguided nod to the original’s famed Parisian car chase with a Paris-set repeat that fails to threaten the pulse in quite the same way.

There are also other comparisons that prove unfortunate outside of the Bourne franchise. Since the end of the series, Homecoming and Killing Eve have taken elements of the Robert Ludlum set-up and gone to intriguing, subversive and most notably, stylish, new places. Treadstone is the far more simplistic and far less cool cousin, in both its direction and its dialogue, a show in need of an added oomph to turn it into something really special.

But as it stands, as a show we really didn’t need in the first place, it’s a pacy and entertaining journey that does more than it could have done with the loose pitch of finding a way to force Bourne back on to the small screen (he was originally played by Richard Chamberlain in a 1988 miniseries). It’s not a mere rehash, boasting a decent amount of ambition, not something we often find in the world of sequels, prequels and extended universes, and that’s something worth fighting for.