Spy vs. spy

Linda Stasi

TV CRITIC

"Rubicon" 8 p.m. tomorrow on AMC

It looks like AMC is three-for-three with their newest original drama, "Rubicon," a throwback espionage thriller that takes place in the present -- if the present were more like the 1970s than the 2000s.

"Rubicon" is set in NYC -- and it really is NYC, complete with Blarney Stone pubs in the background. The series unfolds at the American Policy Institute, a federal agency that seems to exist just to decode things. All kinds of things.

In a nod to the present, instead of brilliant-but-damaged-geeks we have brilliant-but-damaged decoders of the human kind. While each brilliant analyst has his or her own quirks (of the OCD kind), the worst sufferer is Will (James Badge Dale).

James Badge Dale stars as a sad-sack espionage analyst in AMC's "Rubicon," premiering tomorrow.

Will developed his personal OCD after his wife and child were killed on 9/11 when they went to meet him for breakfast. He was emerging from the subway when the first tower was hit and they died.

You don't have to be a brilliant-but-damaged decoder yourself to realize that Will would have been like, oh maybe 22 years old at the time, and the chances of families meeting at that hour on Wall Street during a business day were slim-to-none.

Anyway, Will works with a crew of interesting types, including his boss, David (Peter Gerety), who was a career CIA man before joining API, and the father of Will's dead wife.

It's Will's birthday the day we meet him and his colleagues, including his assistant Maggie (Jessica Collins); troubled analyst Tanya (Lauren Hodges); and mad genius/comic book fanatic/analyst Miles (Dallas Roberts).

Will's not celebrating because he's depressed, and then it only gets worse. Much worse. He suffers yet another giant tragedy and then is immediately thrown into a dark and dangerous world, where he begins to uncover clues that seem to lead to a conspiracy so gigantic it could make his OCD seem like a minor inconvenience.

You might not know right off what it is about "Rubicon" that you like so much.

Is it because it reminds you of the original "Manchurian Candidate," or "Alias," "The X-Files" or maybe even "The Parallax View"?

Yes. But, then again, no. You'll like it because twisting your brain around the mystery will be a giant relief! Missing are the idiotic pyrotechnics and insanely complicated high-tech gizmos. Even the one giant accident takes place off-camera. And so far, at least, not one person blows out of a building during an explosion.

Credit the show's creator, Jason Horwitch, who wrote Fox's "The Pentagon Papers" and executive producer/writer Henry Bromell, who wrote and produced quality shows like "Homicide," "Carnivale" and "The Brotherhood."