Overview: This critically acclaimed drama from the creator of Da Vinci’s Inquest takes you deep inside the murky world of organized crime and the cops who keep tabs on it. As a dedicated father, respected businessman, and big-time drug smuggler, Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey) feels the heat from outlaw bikers muscling in on his territory. Mary Spalding (Klea Scott), the ruthlessly ambitious head of Vancouver’s organized crime unit, fears her rivals in the intelligence community more than she fears criminals. Together, Jimmy and Mary form an uneasy alliance that threatens to undo them both.

DVD Verdict: Betrayal, sex, backstabbing, double-A pot by the ton, more sex, lies, crooked cops, adultery, theft, criminals schmoozing with criminals, cops schmoozing with cops, cops schmoozing with criminals, skag, double agents, blow, still more sex, murder, smug drugglers, money-laundering, dirty laundry laundering. What more can a viewer ask for? And all that’s in the first episode!

Unfortunately, it’s life as we know it in the 21st century, which makes life sometimes quite risky and dangerous. It’s also fortunate that it’s life as we know it in the 21st century, since it makes for some damned fine television.

I don’t know where they dug up the cast for this series, but the acting is top notch throughout. (See below for cast listing.) It’s real to the point of tears. It’s real to the point of tears of joy. In a word, it’s life. You may not be much like any of the characters in the series, but we’ve all, each and every one of us, known, or at least read about their clones. It doesn’t make much never mind if you live in the ghetto, in the ‘hood, or in a gated community. You know these people, or somebody like them.

'Intelligence' is a multi-award winning television series that brings the good guys and bad guys together in a true-to-life drama and action scenario that keeps you glued to your seat, sometimes to the point of hold-your-breath suspense. The show makes its characters ultra-interesting by making them plausible, believable, and true-to-life. You’ve got good guys and bad guys both working for law enforcement, and you’ve got good guys and bad guys both working the wrong side of the street.

Like life today, oftentimes we have to look at it through a grey lens, and sometimes we have to look at it through a rose-colored lens. Things are seldom what they seem, but whether they are or not what they seem, they’re in spades.

The first season takes us through the politics and turmoil of everyday life with snippets of the mundane, which is also everyday life. This is, of course, the foremost appeal of the series, and which makes it a staple of adult television in more than a third of the countries of the world. Something like the better half of the planet watches this show. Take a lesson, America: More Intelligence, less trash TV!

Canada has oil wealth, mineral wealth, and a strong currency. Canadians are highly respected, straight thinking, polite, they have intelligence, and they have Intelligence. There’s that word again. The show is highly informative, it’s educational, and it’s entertaining. Say that about an American TV show and you’ve doomed it, or at least cut it off at the knees. This is a Full Screen Presentation (1.33:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Feature of:

Behind-The-Scenes Clips
Biography of series creator Chris Haddock
Character Descriptions
Cast Filmographies and more.