TNT's New Spy Show Legends Stars a Hyundai

Five minutes into the first episode of the TNT drama Legends, FBI agent Martin Odum, played by British actor Sean Bean, pulls up to a quiet suburban house in a silver, four-door Hyundai Genesis. It’s a very ordinary car, something an aging boomer might buy for its understated luxury. The camera lingers on the Hyundai for a few seconds, not long enough for a casual viewer to notice. Then the Genesis shows up again. And again. It’s the car Odum drives when he goes undercover with a white-supremacist organization. And when he transforms into a slick-haired arms dealer in an attempt to root out chemical weapons that Chechen rebels are manufacturing inexplicably in Los Angeles. (The bad guys drive a Dodge.)

Legends, a 10-episode thriller that premiered on Aug. 13, is exclusively sponsored by Hyundai. The car company’s placements are numerous yet inoffensive—much like its vehicles. The deal also includes an 11-minute sci-fi short, created for Hyundai by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s digital content studio, New Form, which aired over the commercial breaks during the premiere. You can watch the minimovie, about a woman with multicolored curative blood, online or on TNT’s video-on-demand package; it’s hokey but kind of entertaining. Forthcoming shorts will focus on the Hyundais behind the scenes on Legends.