UC: Undercover is an action-thriller television series that focuses on the secret lives and private demons of an elite Justice Department crime-fighting unit that confronts the country’s deadliest, most untouchable lawbreakers by going undercover to bust them. The series was broadcast from 2001 to 2002.
The unit is headed by authoritative Frank Donovan (Oded Fehr) and comprised of undercover agents Jake Shaw (Jon Seda) and Alex Cross (Vera Farmiga), psychological profiler Monica Davis (Bruklin Harris) and young techno-wizard Cody (Jarrad Paul), who runs all of the high-tech surveillance operations.
As a federal team, the group responds to emergencies all over the country: taking down elite bank robbers, drug kingpins, domestic terrorists, spies, jewel thieves and corrupt cops. The drama’s character-driven storylines emphasize the taut, cat-and-mouse game played by the undercover agents as they attempt to infiltrate the lives of a gallery of criminals, including murderous master thief Jack “Sonny” Walker (William Forsythe) and imprisoned drug lord Carlos Cortez (Steven Bauer, in a recurring role).
The series also explores the psychological toll undercover work takes on the agents who play this deadly game of false identities and who commit treachery as a daily profession for the greater good.
The team often butts heads with Paul Bloom (Brian Markinson), their obstructive and fiercely ambitious, career-climbing Justice Department boss.
The stories were written by Shane Salerno. Film composer and Grammy Award winner David Arnold wrote the main title theme and scored the pilot episode. UC: Undercover was a production of NBC Studios in association with Jersey Films, Chasing Time Pictures, Regency Television, and 20th Century Fox Television. Its short but popular run ended when it was canceled by the network.
In the episode with Divoff, Andrew, there are numerous references to a film he did 10 years earlier, Toy Soldiers (1991). Among them, a child being kidnapped and the way it ended.
Fehr, Oded originally wanted to play a villain on UC: Undercover.
