Tradecraft: Fox Buys Female Spy Pilot

Deadline reports that Fox has bought a pilot pitch from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles showrunner Josh Friedman called The Asset. Okay, promising start. That's a good title for a spy series! What's it about? According to the trade blog, the hour-long action show "is described as a character-driven drama set in the New York office of the CIA, which centers on a female agent." All right... I'm positive that Friedman wouldn't just pitch Alias or Covert Affairs and that Fox wouldn't buy a direct clone of an existing show, but I do wish they would have put whatever it is that sets this one apart in its logline! Oh well. You know me. I like spy shows about female agents, so I'd give it a try even if it were a direct copy. That said, I'm pretty sick of shows set at various CIA offices in America. (The most egregious offender was Alias, in which the Agency had a sprawling Los Angeles headquarters.) While Covert Affairs found a pretty clever twist to give Annie Walker some domestic missions, the CIA's mandate is for overseas missions. For this reason (and because I prefer exotic locations to ones I see outside my window... and because the pilot script was awesome), the female spy show I'm most looking forward to right now is ABC's Missing, which takes place in Europe and was actually shot there!