Scott Speedman, Andre Braugher and Dichen Lachman in Last Resort. (ABC)

The new series Last Resort finds the most extreme way possible of asking the age-old question, "What would you do?"

No matter what your job is, think about it: You get an order to do something extreme at work, but the order has not arrived on your desk through the regular channels. You ask why. You're told, "Shut up and do it." But it seems very wrong.

You don't have to be on a submarine to feel trapped by such a scenario, but the cast of Last Resort -- which debuts Thursday on ABC and Global -- actually is on a sub.

U.S. Captain Marcus Chaplin (played by Andre Braugher) receives orders to fire nuclear weapons at a foreign country. The series of events that follows Captain Chaplin's questioning of those orders turns him and his crew into rogue enemies of their own country. Some are fine with that, some are not.

"Doing the right thing and protecting your crew are not necessarily the same thing," Braugher said. "Another captain would follow the order. And Marcus Chaplin follows legal orders.

"The leader is not always going to be well understood because thinking a couple steps ahead irritates people."

Hey, I like that. The next time you irritate someone, tell them you're merely thinking a couple steps ahead. That ought to smooth things over about as well as it does for Captain Chaplin.

-- Bill Harris