What do you get when you download the secrets of the US government into the brain of a very startled computer expert? The answer is Chuck, NBC’s espionage action comedy with a sci-fi tinge. Words: Abbie Bernstein

“I had written a spy script as a feature film,” explains Chris Fedak, co-creator of Chuck. “Josh [Schwartz, co-creator] read it and liked it, and he started talking about TV shows. I had this idea about a guy who had all these secrets in his head, and Josh really saw the comedic opportunities in that -‘What if it happened to a regular guy? Someone without any type of superpower, who isn’t trained as a spy - and we put him into this spy world.’ It would be fun and exciting. Everything would be a first time. First car chase, first base jump off a cliff, first anything…”

For leading man Zachary Levi, the word ‘spy’ conjures up the image of “somebody who’s cool and really debonair and has all those powers.” Of course that description hardly sums up the show’s hero. “Chuck is just a schmuck who can’t get a date," says Levi. "He’s a great guy and he really means well - he cares about people and he wants to fix people’s computers to the best of his ability. But at the end of the day, he’ll pee in his pants if a gun gets pulled on him!”

Rival handlers

As a new espionage “asset,” Chuck acquires two rival handlers: John Casey of the National Security Agency (NSA), played by Adam Baldwin, and C.I.A. agent Sarah Walker, played by Yvonne Strahowski. Chuck develops a crush on Sarah, who poses as his girlfriend so that outsiders won’t be suspicious of her constant proximity.

“What’s interesting about Chuck and Sarah is they’re really almost the same person,” Levi says. “We’re very different, obviously, in the sense that she’s a spy and can kick anyone’s butt and can wield guns, drive cars and all the stuff that’s super-cool, and I’m the absolute polar opposite of that. But when it comes to fitting into normal life, she’s a C.I.A. operative. She doesn’t know what normal life is about. She’s been on a mission since she was 21 and so I teach her a lot. In the process, there’s this really interesting dynamic.”

Baldwin’s Casey is working undercover as Chuck’s colleague at the Buy More electronics superstore - an uncomfortable disguise for a man who seems to think that most people are idiots who should be grateful that he hasn’t killed them. In this, Casey somewhat resembles Baldwin’s Firefly character, mercenary Jayne Cobb. “Jayne had that opinion,” Baldwin agrees. "Casey is annoyed by Buy More, but we’re trying to bring some lovely humanity to him with his love for plants, for instance.”

Customer service

Joshua Gomez, who plays Chuck’s best friend and Buy More colleague Morgan, actually worked in similar establishments before getting paid acting work. “I’ve had the retail job,” he smiles. “That’s why it’s funny. I’ve actually done the electronics stores. I’ve done some terrible jobs on the way to glamorous Hollywood – I was terrible in customer service!” So does the Buy More set trigger any bad memories for the actor? “No, because it’s so cool…But I will say that there are definitely some fun things that I throw in from my own experience.”

The other key cast member is Sarah Lancaster as Chuck’s loving, protective sister Ellie, who has no idea her sibling has been co-opted by the government. “I originally read for the spy [Sarah Walker],” Lancaster says. “But then they got the perfect Chuck, and we just looked like brother and sister. I have a baby brother, so the role comes very naturally. I also mother all of my friends – I mother my own mother! I’m just kind of a mother hen by nature.”

Enter the ninja

Gomez remembers a sequence in Chuck’s opening episode involving Chuck, Morgan and a ninja hurling Chuck’s belongings at one another. “I was throwing the stuff, and there was a stuntman hitting those objects back at us,” he recalls. “It was a lot of fun – it was a lot of work, though!”

Levi also enthuses that the ninja sequence was "probably my favourite action scene to shoot." But he found plenty more highlights to choose from. “There’s comedy, where Sarah and Casey both come to Chuck’s house for dinner and they’re trying to kill each other. And there’s a fight in a helicopter, there’s a knife fight between Casey and Sarah…there’s so much going on!”

Fedak says that the show is split evenly between action and comedy. “The exciting thing is, a person can come from the spy world, and they’re scary, and they’re real. And then they walk into the Buy More, and there are characters we care about in a real way. That’s the energy of the show.”

Chuck is currently airing on Virgin 1.