Tradecraft: Gaumont Plots CIA Assassin Series Crosshair

Gaumont TV Europe will produce a 13-episode season of a CIA thriller entitled Crosshair, Deadline reports. Gaumont announced an aggressive plan last year to produce two new English language series a year, starting with William Boyd's Cold War Berlin-set Spy City. Now they've got another spy show in the pipeline, with the contemporary action thriller procedural Crosshair, following a CIA assassin and shot on location throughout Europe. Crosshair was created by Ken Sanzel, whose producing credits include Numb3rs, Blue Bloods and the Ironside remake. Here's the trade's rather clunky description:

The procedural aspect of Crosshair will see each episode focus on the circumstances and implications of a single rifle shot. The story of the globetrotting thriller centers on John, a freelance sniper with a CIA blessing to go anywhere and shoot for almost anyone. After discovering he has a 16-year-old daughter with the only woman he nearly loved, and realizing that his partner tried to kill him, he drifts into a mid-life crisis. Questioning everything he’s seen and done, he begins to develop a mercurial moral code. There’s also a throughline which sees John attempt to untangle a large conspiracy while at the same time trying to protect his career status and life.

Deadline adds that European broadcasters have lamented the lack of weekly procedurals, designed to be tuned into with no knowledge of what's happened before, as the U.S. becomes more and more focused on highly serialized event programming. Gaumont hopes to fill this void with Crosshair.