Although a high-stakes international spy mission may not be where you expect to see affable rom-com darling Noah Centineo, he brings the same undeniable charm to his latest project, The Recruit. In fact, for the first-time executive producer and star, the role of Owen Hendricks, a young lawyer who has just started work at the C.I.A., couldn’t have felt like a better fit: “I read the pilot and my initial reaction was, How did this person write me into a script without my permission? And I called my team and I said, Who gave this guy permission to put me into a TV show?”

The eight-episode series, written and created by Alexi Hawley (The Rookie) and executive produced and partly directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), follows the journey of three recent law school graduates, Owen, his ex-girlfriend Hannah (Fivel Stewart) and Terrance (Daniel Quincy Annoh). While Hannah and Terrance have taken more cushy, stable positions at “the firm” and the Department of Treasury, Owen sets out to work for the General Counsel’s Office of the C.I.A, where his own coworker tells him to get out “before the ink dries on your paperwork.” One day, while he is sorting through graymail, which is correspondence from people the rest of the office refer to as “the crazies,” Owen comes face to face with a substantiated threat from a former asset, a C.I.A. informant named Maxine Meladze (Laura Haddock). Thus begins an international heist with high-stakes consequences. 

While the series does evoke subterfuge flicks of old, it also offers a fresh perspective, as Hawley describes, “Most spy movies or shows are about a 30-something-year-old guy who’s really good at his job. To bring in this kid who just graduated from law school, who’s way in over his head, who’s super charming and also super willing to jump into the deep end without looking first . . . most people can’t identify with working as a spy or a lawyer for spies, but everybody can identify with being 24 years old and starting down the road towards adulthood.”