Entertainment

James Bond has a new face with Daniel Craig, but as NBC's new series My Own Worst Enemy reminds us, there's a new superspy atop the pop culture pyramid – Jason Bourne.

While this high-tech thrill ride isn't exactly a direct spinoff of the Bourne film franchise – in the way Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles connects with the Terminator franchise – it is obviously modeled after the successful film series.

Like Matt Damon's spy, Christian Slater plays a man with two identities, but My Own Worst Enemy attempts to add its own differentiating twists to the twin-personalities tale.

"Obviously there are some similarities," Mr. Slater told television critics at this summer's press tour. "But I think it's the differences that really make this show interesting. My character isn't lost in a fog, trying to remember or reclaim his lost identity. My character really is two guys living in one body."

As is usually the case when some crucial plot element in an action-packed storyline doesn't make sense, this is where technology kicks in.

Mr. Slater is able to play two guys sharing one body thanks to a computer implanted in his brain by a supersecret wing of the U.S. government.

By day, he is Henry, mild-mannered salaryman, happily married with two adorable children. Conveniently, his work demands frequent business trips.

This is where the other guy comes into play – Edward, spy extraordinaire, speaker of myriad languages, skilled at all manner of lethal arts.

The show's pilot spends a lot of time, necessarily, trying to make this setup seem believable.

We see how the dual-person plan works: A computer tech operates as Edward/Henry's own private air-traffic controller, bringing Henry in for a sleepy-bye landing and clearing Edward for takeoff with the push of a button and whirl of downloaded images and info. The always-welcome Alfre Woodard is Edward's all-knowing supervisor.

The twist here is that while Henry seems the more grounded and fully developed character, it turns out he is the computer-generated fiction. Edward is the original model. That creates the potential for all sorts of interesting moral, not to mention practical, quandaries.

"I like the tension this show sets up," Mr. Slater said.

NBC

Christian Slater is bold spy Edward Albright and mild guy Henry Spivey.

"I'm not playing some Jekyll-and-Hyde thing where it's two sides of the same guy. I get to play two completely different guys. They are completely unrelated in every way except for the fact that they live in the same body. That's an interesting situation to be in as an actor."

And it's an interesting situation to watch as a viewer. The action is impressively cinematic, and Mr. Slater shows he may just have the acting chops to make this time-share body arrangement work. He does more than just squint his eyes to look deadly when Henry morphs into Edward.

But the show is going to have to do a better job of making sense of all this high-tech brain-implant hocus-pocus, or this series' own worst enemy will be its own-worst-enemy premise.

My Own Worst Enemy

B-

9 Monday, NBC (Channel 5). 1 hr. Also starring Mike O'Malley, Saffron Burrows and Yara Martinez.