'Covert Affairs' kind of like a CIA version of 'The Office'

Never let it be said that an affinity for conjugating verbs leads to a dull life. Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), a language whiz, is plucked from her CIA training to work a dangerous case in "Covert Affairs," an hourlong USA Network series premiering Tuesday, July 13.

The smart, action-packed thriller fits well with USA's "White Collar," which returns for its second season the same night. International assassination plots, shootouts, beatings, chase scenes, romantic intrigue, internecine office politics, press leaks - it's all there in the pilot. "Covert Affairs" does what a TV drama should - feel realistic, only better and a bit shinier. It's just that when you take on an agency as necessarily secretive as the CIA and present it as truth, you need to be correct.

Matt Corman, who created the show with Chris Ord, describes it as "a workplace show set at the CIA, but they often treat it as a mysterious, mythic institution." They visited the agency, and Corman maintains the facts referred to are indeed facts. One stands out, and it's essential to why Annie is there. Her work buddy, Auggie (Christopher Gorham, "Ugly Betty"), tells her there was a hiring freeze that was "unfrozen after 9/11, and 50 percent of the agency has five years experience or less."

Not quite accurate, says a CIA spokeswoman. "It is more correct that about half of the agency's employees were hired after 9/11," she says. "That means 50 percent have nine or fewer years as opposed to five or fewer." She adds there wasn't actually a hiring freeze before the terrorist attacks.

This knowledge doesn't detract from the action scenes or the cast, but it does make the premise feel less authentic. Then again, how many CIA operatives work in Louboutin heels? Despite an elegant wardrobe, Perabo radiates girl-next-door appeal, if your neighbor happens to be brilliant and sexy.

"We keep talking about her as the spy next door," Perabo says. "She gets pulled out of training before she is finished. She is in over her head, and she has a real sort of belief in the Constitution and an idealized view of America. I really believe Annie believes in what makes America great."

This role is extremely physical, which exhausts - and exhilarates - Perabo. "We are trying to do a movie every episode, and Doug Liman is a very ambitious producer," she says of the producer behind the "Bourne" trilogy. "They are hard days, but it is wonderful. I've had fight training. A couple of days ago, I rappelled down an elevator shaft in high heels, which was hilarious. Yesterday I was fly-fishing in a river."

In the pilot, it is mentioned that Annie is the best female driver the CIA ever had, and she does some fancy, don't-try-this driving. Perabo admits she just learned to drive a manual transmission - on a Ferrari!

"It was a really expensive car to grind the gears on," she says. Annie speaks Senegalese, Russian, French, Spanish, English and Portuguese. Perabo learns pronunciation from native speakers in multicultural Toronto, where the 11-episode series is shot. There, Gorham found the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and learned to move convincingly as someone blinded in an accident.

"I didn't know anyone who is blind, and I certainly didn't want to borrow anyone else's performance," Gorham says.

Gorham has been on enough shows that he knows when a series feels successful. "In a weird way, this reminds me of `Ugly Betty' before 'Ugly Betty' premiered," he says. "You just fall in love and root for the main character, and you want her to succeed and don't want her to get hurt. I remember feeling that way about Betty when I saw the pilot."

As likable as Annie is, the character played by Peter Gallagher ("The O.C."), CIA Director of Clandestine Services Arthur Campbell, isn't.

"He was encouraged to contribute his energies to the CIA, which he did first on the ground and then in an administrative way," Gallagher says. "He provides a nice balance from the bureaucrats who have never done that and tell people to do it. And he tries to balance demands of modern-day politics and national security interests. Also, he is also trying to balance a marriage. (He is) married to somebody who works in the agency, which is encouraged because they cannot talk to anyone outside of the agency (about their work)."

Campbell's wife, Joan (Kari Matchett), is Annie's boss. She's tough, shrewd and suspects her husband is having an affair. Joan brooks no excuses from Annie, who in the pilot has a day that defies odds. Annie is caught in a spray of gunfire, is nearly thrown beneath a moving train, outmaneuvers assassins, is arrested, pretends to be a hooker and lies to her sister about her real job. Gallagher notes how the rest of us can "just have a bad day," but for operatives, a bad day "can be a national catastrophe."

What makes the characters far more believable than some fictional spies is their life away from work. "They are not just James Bond, where he is really disconnected from his personal life," Perabo says. "You really know about their families and love lives. Valerie Plame Wilson (the CIA operative whose identity was revealed) was technical adviser for the pilot. There's a whole personal component that's fascinating and a look that we haven't seen of the CIA."