'Hunted' raises the excitement level as well as questions

It's hard to think of a more shadowy world than the private intelligence industry, which serves as the backdrop to Cinemax's exhilarating espionage thriller

Hunted

, a BBC co-production from

X-Files

producer Frank Spotnitz that begins an eight-episode first season at 10 p.m. Friday.

It's a realm where spies and special-forces operatives are deployed to gather intelligence about corporations, individuals, or foreign governments - and sell it for a profit. Disturbing ethical questions abound: Should spy companies work for anyone with the money, no matter how questionable their ends?

That's just one of the fascinating issues that come up - among the gunplay, knifeplay, explosive Krav Maga dances, and love-making - in Hunted. The remarkably capable, assured, and sexy Melissa George stars as Sam Hunter, a top operative at one of England's most powerful spy shops. Housed in a neo-byzantine glass, concrete, and steel maze in London, the company has one of the most melodramatic names on TV - Byzantium.

The series opens in mid-mission - and in flagrante delicto. It's a hot summer night in Tangier; Sam and a North African smooth-'n'-suave terrorist dude named Bernard Faroux (Dhaffer L'Abidine) are slipping out of their clothes in a passionate embrace. It's true love!

Of course not. Sam is an operative; he's a target.

In a terrifically edited sequence out of Mission: Impossible, Sam and her spy partner and lover, Aidan Marsh (Adam Rayner), foil Faroux's plans and recover a scientist imprisoned in his dungeons. (Who hired Sam's company? The scientist's employers who want him safely returned? Or a rival terrorist who wants to kill him? See the conundrum?)

Things go south when Sam asks to meet Aidan for some post-mission R&R at their fave cafe. He doesn't show up. She's gunned down at their meeting point by vicious-looking thugs. (She kills every one of them before passing out, of course.) Sam is terrified: Did Aidan betray her? Who wants her dead?

Hunted is a complex, if at times overly baroque, conspiracy thriller that takes Sam on a strange quest. To find out who wants her dead, she will have to uncover an international conspiracy that would put Dan Brown to shame.

At a full 60 minutes, each episode packs a movie-size punch and takes the viewer deeper into the maze. Despite its occasional heavy-handedness, Hunted will give genre junkies a real high - and some food for thought.