Chris O’Donnell (Scent Of A Woman) stars as fictional hero Jack McAuliffe, a man caught in the dark underside of the American intelligence community, in a brand-new TV event for BBC Two.

The Company is based on Robert Littell’s gritty, best-selling novel about the CIA, and comes from the writer of Black Hawk Down, the makers of Rome and Band Of Brothers and acclaimed director Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions. The series spans a 30-year period, from the Cold War up to the first Gulf War, and features genuine events and characters.

It is January 1954 in West Berlin. Brilliant CIA operative Harvey Torriti, code-named Sorcerer, and his young assistant, Jack McAuliffe, code-named Apprentice, make contact with a man who seeks to defect with his family from East Germany. In exchange, he offers Sorcerer the name of a KGB mole working in MI6. The Sorcerer agrees to the plan and arranges for the defection to take place. Unfortunately, however, the KGB gets wind of the plan and interferes. As a result, it becomes clear to Sorcerer and to CIA counter-intelligence specialist James Jesus Angleton, code-named Mother, that it was the MI6 mole who gave away the information. But who that mole is remains unknown.

Harvey Torriti is played by Alfred Molina, Jack McAuliffe by Chris O’Donnell and James Jesus Angleton by Michael Keaton.

BBC2, 9.40pm