Is Peacock’s The Copenhagen Test Based on a True Story? Learn How It Was Created
Find out the surprising inspiration for the espionage show, The Copenhagen Test, from an iconic 1990s film to certain spy novels.
The concept driving Peacock's new espionage thriller, The Copenhagen Test, is a fascinating one.
Simu Liu (Barbie, Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) stars as analyst Alexander Hale, who works for The Orphanage, a government watchdog service for U.S. intelligence agencies, and discovers that his brain has been hacked. The unknown culprits have a live feed of everything Alexander sees and hears. And the organization he works for convinces him it's best to keep the hack open to try to use it to their advantage.
The action-packed show follows Alexander as he grapples with the hack, trying to prove his loyalty as an agent, and also trying to keep himself and his parents safe.
With such a riveting storyline, Peacock Blog asked the show's creator how the idea for the series came about.
Is The Copenhagen Test based on a true story?
The Peacock spy series is not based on a true story. Rather, the concept for the show “came from a couple of places,” The Copenhagen Test creator and co-showrunner Thomas Brandon told Peacock Blog. Those sources of inspiration include spy novels, a 1990s comedy-drama film, and Brandon's own laptop getting hacked.
How was Peacock’s The Copenhagen Test created?
Brandon said that one of the sparks that led to him creating the series was "my deep, nerdy love of John le Carré spy novels like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy... great '70s, '80s Cold War paranoia."
The showrunner also pointed to the 1998 film, The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey played a charming character who didn't know that he was the star of a reality TV show and that his life was being broadcast 24/7.
“Loving the weirdness of that... the fake world and the question of, 'What is real and what is not?' — and so these were the loves that were already in my heart," Brandon explained. "And then I had a laptop that was hacked and it was like ransomware, it was so stupid. But then I started thinking about, 'If I’m worried about my webcam and my phone being hacked, what’s next? What’s five minutes in the future?'"
Brandon came up with some worst-case scenarios.
“I started thinking about, 'Oh, if my eyes were hacked, that would be the worst,’” Brandon told Peacock Blog. “And I started thinking about who would be the worst person [to get hacked], and the worst person would be someone working inside this agency where everything he is looking at is top secret so he’s betraying his country without knowing it.”
How the Alexander Hale character in The Copenhagen Test came to life
Liu's character is first generation Chinese American. Another integral part of Alexander's backstory is that he served in the military before becoming an intelligence analyst.
Jennifer Yale, co-showrunner and executive producer of The Copenhagen Test, told Peacock Blog that both of those aspects were essential to the character.
“I think for us, in this story especially, the idea of, do you pick your conscience over your country or vice versa, it was really important to play that,” Yale said. “[Alexander] actually served for this country and still on top of that, he’s questioned about his loyalty to America.”
Yale views him as the “underdog of this impossible situation.”
“I’m half Filipino and my mom — she loves being an American. Loves it. Knows more about American history than I do because she studied it as an adult, and it means something to her,” Yale explained. “So much of what we wanted to make feel universal is this idea of [Alexander's] also doing this for his parents, who are really proud to be here and really proud of who he is and what he has done for this country."
Brandon said he envisioned a character who would be “desperate” to prove that they belonged at the intelligence agency and that they were loyal to America.
“That’s the kind of thing that I’ve never had to prove to anybody and thinking about that extra burden that would be on him, that would push him to go farther to make him want to prove, 'I will keep the hack open. I will show you that I'm doing the right thing,'" Brandon explained. “Once I had that character and The Truman Show weirdness came in and the old school timeless Cold War paranoia came in, and the stew that created was really interesting weaves of tones and genres that felt right and felt a little timeless. It felt like we have a show.”
All eight episodes of The Copenhagen Test will be available to stream on Peacock on Saturday, December 27, 2025.
