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Archer takes spy spoofing to a whole new level for adult TV animation. All images courtesy of FX.

Imagine The Office and Mad Men meet Bond and Bourne: inter-office, espionage-style sniping, snarling, backstabbing and, of course, sex. That's Archer, a new half-hour, animated, adult comedy, created by Adam Reed (Adult Swim's Frisky Dingo and Sealab 2021) and his Atlanta-based Floyd County Prods., premiering tonight on FX with two back-to-back episodes at 10:00 and 10:30 pm. The series, exec produced by Matt Thompson, airs for 10 consecutive Thursdays at 10:00 pm.

Set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS), a spy agency where espionage and global crises merely intensify the heat that goes on in the office. Suave, superspy Sterling Archer is voiced by H. Jon Benjamin; Malory Archer, his ball-busting mother and boss, is voiced by Jessica Walter; Lane Kane, his colleague and vindictive ex-girlfriend is voiced by Aisha Tyler; his aging but loyal butler, Woodhouse, is voiced by George Coe; Cyril Figgis, the befuddled ISIS comptroller and Kane's latest boyfriend, is voiced by Chris Parnell; Cheryl, the Miss Moneypenny of the series, is voiced by Judy Greer; and Pam, the director of human resources, is voiced by Amber Nash.

The initial episodes airing tonight are "Training Day," in which Kane's residual lust for Archer, prompts Malory to promote Figgis to field agent, resulting in some offbeat training by Archer; and "Mole Hunt," in which Archer goes to great lengths to cover up his over-the-top expense account.

I spoke with Reed about his love of the spy genre and how it led to this hysterically funny satire.

Mallory is a parody of Judi Dench's M. Adam Reed had Jessica Walter in mind and was glad to get her.

Adam Reed: Well, my old partner, Matt Thompson, and I had two shows on Adult Swim: Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo. And in each one of those, we sort of took an established genre and turned it upside down a little bit and I was trying to think of the next genre I could do that with and I kept coming back to spy fiction. I took 2008 off and did a lot of traveling, so I was in foreign lands and the James Bond movies and, recently, the Bourne movies are so seared into my brain that it's hard to be in a foreign capital with beautiful women and not think about James Bond or Jason Bourne, and how they would be doing things. So I wanted to mess it up a bit and did a lot of research and saw a lot of movies, but the main thing that I read was years ago a friend gave me every James Bond paperback. And I started reading those novels and they're pretty dark. They're not like the Roger Moore movies at all.

BD: They're not even like the Sean Connery movies.

AR: And then you had all the office politics going on with the Smiley books. But it's such a great genre to play with because you have every color of the rainbow. You've got fun, wacky, stuff, pretty familiar stuff, but it's all pretty familiar to an audience, even if they're just casual fans. Even if they've only seen a few Bond movies, they know the setup and how it works.