Intelligence has returned with well, more intelligence

Only when asked, I say that my current favourite TV show is Intelligence. Nobody recognizes it. I'm met with blank stares and if I mention it is a CBC Vancouver production, this is followed by laughter. I'm written off as some overly patriotic nut job, the kind of masochistic viewer who watches Canadian drama.

But oh man is this show good. It follows the intertwined lives to Mary Spalding (Klea Scott), the recently promoted BC CSIS chief and Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey), the grass dealing kinpin of the coast. If you are watching a fairly boring re-start to a superhero-opera in the same Monday night timeslot, you are missing out. Last winter, at the conclusion of the first season, Jimmy was trapped in a Seattle DEA sting, trying to get out of a showdown that very much looked like a way to actually conclude the series. And that was what I was afraid of. Intelligence would get canceled, because some maple-leaf wearing nutjob in London Ontario was the only viewer. But it didn't get canceled, and Jimmy's escape and trek back across the border was an incredible mixture of great scenes, cold realism and adept characterizations.

Credit for this excellent series goes to Chris Haddock, the big-brained talent behind Da Vinci's Inquest and Da Vinci's City Hall. Turns out Haddock and the show have a substantial foreign viewing audience, gathering huge numbers in Australia and Europe.

So thank you Melbourne! Thank you Helsinki! I have some viewing kinship with other parts of the world, even if the people who co-write this blog look at me as a kind of maple-leaf wearing nutjob.

Give Intelligence a try. Mondays at 9pm. DRAMA. ON CBC!!!!!