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Nobody ever accused the Fox Network of high-brow TV pretensions. Let PBS and HBO scramble for glowing reviews and Emmy nominations. Fox still shoots for the broad viewer base, and vive le difference.

And while most American broadcasters continue to search for that groundbreaking new drama, the network of American Idol and The Family Guy keeps moving in the opposite direction with the new series Human Target (tonight, CTV at 10 p.m.; Sunday, Fox at 8 p.m.). If Fox's new action series looks like a comic book, that's because it is one.

Filmed in Vancouver, Human Target was tagged as this season's sleeper hit at the recent TV critics tour in L.A. The show takes its inspiration from a seventies comic book, which later became a popular graphic novel. This isn't the first attempt to bring the character to television; there was also a 1992 ABC series called Human Target, starring singer Rick Springfield, but no would ever mistake that show for the hardcore Fox version.

This time, the concept stars former Boston Legal regular Mark Valley as Christopher Chance, a highly-paid bodyguard/private contractor whose specialty involves drawing out his clients' enemies. You want action? In the first show, Chance is shown clinging atop a speeding bullet train, among other feats of derring-do.

"This is by far the most physical acting job I've ever done," said the ruggedly handsome Valley, who came to acting following a stint in the U.S. Army. "For inspiration I used the graphic novels, because violence is always the last resort option for Chance. He's really a thinking-man's hero."

All thinking aside, the format of Human Target lends itself to some creative action scenarios, and usually more than one per episode. When a corporate CEO is concerned one of his employees is about to go postal, in comes Chance as the new company auditor. When a bank president is tipped off about an upcoming heist, he's their new teller. Much of the energy on Human Target comes from executive producer McG, who wanted to bring back the type of action show he grew up watching.

"We wanted it to be like those great action shows of the eighties, like The A-Team," said McG, who directed the films Charlie's Angels and Terminator: Salvation. "We looked at the current television landscape and there wasn't a show like that on the air. Until now."

In another throwback to simpler TV times, Chance has solid friends providing backup. His life-and-death assignments are brokered by a burly business partner Winston (Chi McBride), with occasional assistance coming from a mysterious figure named Guerrero, played by Jackie Earle Haley, a simmering quiet type who is both a computer genius and highly-trained assassin.

"I'm not much of a computer geek, and I'm also not a tough guy," admitted Haley, a former child star whose acting career rebooted with an Oscar nomination for the 2006 film Little Children. "But there are several layers to Guerrero that will come to light as the series goes on. He's a pretty intense guy."

Likewise for the title character, though don't expect too many details to be revealed in the first season. As per the Human Target graphic novels, the TV version only hints vaguely at Chance's secret past, which will presumably be revealed as the series progresses. Was he formerly a government operative? Why would a man put himself in life-and-death situations, over and over? And how did Chance learn to speak Japanese and several other foreign languages so fluently?

"I had to work on my Spanish for the last episode we were shooting," Valley said. "And for anybody who says acting isn't brain surgery, just the other day I was doing a scene in Spanish, while driving a Jeep through a tent and shooting at a gas tank that exploded and blocked the gate, so we wouldn't be chased by the Latin American rebels. Being a hero these days takes more than just muscle."