Former Lost star Josh Holloway returns in ‘Intelligence’

“Intelligence,” premiering Tuesday, Jan. 7, on CBS, looks at the new gray area where man meets machine.

In the set for a high-tech government facility built on the Disney lot in Burbank, Calif., evidence is examined in hopes of catching someone targeting scientists. Leading the analysis is former Special Forces operative Gabriel Vaughn (Josh Holloway), who has a supercomputer microchip in his brain. Eyeing him is one of the potential targets, a tech executive named Bryce, who has a big interest in the intersection of the organic and the electronic. He wonders just how human Gabriel still is, and Gabriel assures him he’s very human. Bryce is skeptical, and when Gabriel asks the exec what he thinks he is, Bryce replies, “The future.”

“When I read this material, it was like, ‘This is something that is very interesting.’ It’s now; it’s very current; it’s the relationship between technology and our humanity, how that is changing daily, how we are dealing as a society now,” Holloway told the Daily Herald in Chicago.

“I liked the fact that the character was more human than machine, and he had a hidden agenda for volunteering for this program. He was desperate to find his wife.”

Helgenberger plays Gabriel’s boss, director Lillian Strand, a no-nonsense type of gal who calls the shots with, well, machine-like efficiency. She assigns Secret Service agent Riley Neal (Meghan Ory of Once Upon a Time) to protect Gabriel and curb his unpredictable behaviour.

Television has long explored the relationship between man and machine — think of the Jetsons and their housekeeping-bot Rosie, or Michael Knight and K.I.T.T. on Knight Rider. More recently, there’s Harold Finch’s surveillance super-computer on Person of Interest.

But, in light of the recent NSA scandal in the U.S., Intelligence takes a more timely tone. Tuesday’s sneak preview finds Gabriel and Riley on a mission to rescue the man who invented Gabriel’s microchip before secret technology falls into the wrong hands.

The series, debuting in a plum spot after NCIS and before Person of Interest on CBS, moves to Monday nights starting next week.

The high-stakes plots demand plenty of action — running, shooting, car chases, furrowed brows and the like. Holloway, who roughed it out with the other survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 on Lost, relishes the physicality.

“I’ve been doing martial arts all my life, and I grew up with three brothers and James Bond,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “We all wanted to be James Bond and we played spy games our whole lives. So with this it was like, this is fun. It’s like Disneyland for dudes!” (Intelligence, Tuesday, 9 p.m. ET/PT, 10 MT, 8 CT, CTV/CBS)

Three to see

• Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara serves as executive-producer on new crime drama Killer Women. It centres on Molly Parker (played by Alberta-born Tricia Helfer), the only woman in the notoriously male Texas Rangers. (10 ET/PT, 8 MT, 9 CT, City/ABC)

• Arctic Air takes flight with Season 3, as the team launches a search-and-rescue operation to save Dev and Astrid. (9 ET/PT/MT/CT, CBC)

• OMG, you guys! Pretty Little Liars is back for its winter premiere! The addictive teen mystery series kicks off with the episode Who’s in the Box?, in which Hanna suggests the girls find out who is really buried in Alison’s grave. (8 ET, 5 PT, 6 MT, 7 CT, M3)

Agencies