Spook speaks
Interesting piece in yesterday’s Toronto Star about tonight’s season finale of Intelligence, which may or may not be on its last legs with CBC.
Michael Wilson is a former U.S. intelligence operative who is now producing an American spy show (perhaps he’s waiting for his writers to come in from the cold….) Wilson wrote a letter to the Star about how informative and engaging Intelligence is.
The letter is a little odd – part ode to the show, part rant on U.S. political hegemony, and part a plea a for viewers for a fellow producer’s program. Here’s what he has to say about the finale:
You won’t need a spoiler alert for this next bit about Season Two, but Mary is about to be thrust onto the horns of a moral dilemma: do your job as a handler and protector of your country, but deal with the human cost of having that upper hand. If you’ve been following the story, you know our CSIS heroes and anti-heroes are fighting yet another egregious violation of Canadian sovereignty, this time from a CIA front. My advice to Mary echoes advice Haddock clearly channels from the collective spook unconscious: when you’re up against people whose job it is to break the law, previously of just the target country but increasingly the moribund, anachronistic concept of “international law,” your greatest skill may well be to lie like a f—ing rug.
It’s all here in the show: drugs, sex, money, betrayal, moles, smuggling, murder, money laundering, geopolitical stakes. But beyond just words, there’s an opportunity to immerse yourself in the distilled essence of the “Great Game” and decide if you want to play, and if so for which team? Choose, and watch.
The two-hour season finale of Intelligence runs tonight at 8:00 on CBC-TV.
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Watching as I type this. Definitely a show worth the money…
I can’t say it enough times. This is the best show airing this season. Should absolutely be given a 3rd, 4th, etc. season – as many as Chris Haddock is prepared to produce!
“Intelligence” has been the most enjoyable and entertaining CBC drama in quite some time. It is well written, well acted and directed and leaves the viewer hanging on every turn. It would be a great crime if this show were not to be picked up for future seasons (let’s hope it avoids the same sad ending as ‘This is Wonderland” (R.I.P.).
Surely quality must count for something.
Meanwhile Chris Haddock is writing at The Tyee (http://thetyee.ca), blasting the CBC for not promoting his show, and some CBC PR person is responding with a defensive and unpersuasive comment that damns Intelligence with faint praise. It does not look promising for a third season.
Given the show’s themes–US meddling, water exports, etc.–it would be understandable if the current government didn’t like Intelligence…and Haddock further taunted the Conservatives last night when one of the CSIS spooks observed that “governments come and go,” while national interests last.
“Intelligence”…for intelligent viewers!!! i live in seattle, but fortunately can bring in cbc. apart from coronation street, cbc, for me, has little to offer in the past until Intelligence came on the scene. cbc comedy is awful… rick mercer is pathetic…Little House should stay in Sask. and This Hour is the same old same Old(why does not the host wear a different set of clothes??) Intelligence has the potential to go on for many seasons—and hopefully for cbc views it will!!
Mr Big Guy was gloating that he had created a CBC “more like Tim Horton’s & less like Starbucks”. I thought there was a CBC Board of Governors in charge? The PM anointed the perfect choice to lead the CBC – a lawyer:oh, but he was a sports commentator once. This leaves Mr. Big Guy to consolidate every aspect of ‘our’ public broadcaster into some dumbed down lump of pablum. But we can all look forward to those wonderful game shows coming next fall. Let’s hope they bring back re-runs of the Rockford Files when Intell is replaced. That’ll make the PM real happy.
Not Tom Stone? It was set up along similar lines as Rockford, but was set in our current PM’s backyard of Calgary. Which isn’t a bad place to set a detective show nowadays, I’d think.