Intelligence - Region 1 DVD

"One of the smartest cop dramas in years" -- The Vancouver Sun

"Smart. . .sexy. . .edgy" -- The Toronto Star

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.

From Vancouver’s mean streets to its high-rise offices, Intelligence shows the shifty nature of undercover information-gathering, where your deadliest enemy can become your closest confidant and treachery is taken for granted.

DVD FEATURES INCLUDE behind-the-scenes clips, biography of series creator Chris Haddock, character descriptions, cast filmographies, and more.

Contains strong coarse language.


You may need a scorecard to keep track of all the characters appearing in Intelligence. But identifying their agendas is no problem, as they all seem to have the one that's spelled out in the series' title: namely, the gathering of the kind of inside information commonly known as intelligence. Throughout the 14 episodes (including a two-part pilot) comprising the first season (2006) of this Canadian police drama, there are cops who infiltrate the ranks of the bad guys, and vice versa. There are bad policemen and good criminals. There are rats, moles, and worms galore--so many, in fact, that even some of the rats have rats--and so much treachery, suspicion, and mistrust that one wonders how anyone has time for anything else. At the center of all this activity are two principals: Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey), a Vancouver businessman who also happens to operate a thriving drug-running enterprise, and Mary Spalding (Klea Scott), a cop who currently heads the city's Organized Crime Unit but wants to be promoted to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Reardon is no Tony Soprano; he's a low-key kind of guy who responds to his subordinates' frequent screw-ups not with violence but with a shrug, who gives his cokehead ex-wife (Camille Sullivan) and alcoholic brother (Bernie Coulson) endless opportunities to betray and disappoint him, and who forms an "uneasy alliance" with Spalding, supplying her with information in return for her backing off on the police surveillance of his marijuana-dealing activities. For her part, the humorless Spalding is almost universally unliked, but too preoccupied with nailing her cheating husband (she hires a private investigator to collect intelligence on the guy), rooting out the traitor in the OCU, and pursuing her new gig to care.

While there are some intriguing ideas here, both professionally (especially in the early episodes, when a file containing the names of the police's confidential informants falls into the wrong hands, putting many lives in jeopardy) and personally (including Reardon's competition with his ex for custody of their daughter and Spalding's struggle to get ahead in a male-dominated world), Intelligence falls short of consistently compelling viewing. On most levels--acting, writing, action, excitement--the show has a kind of second-tier vibe that simply doesn't measure up to its more flashy American counterparts; these days, dealing pot seems mighty small-time, and when it comes to "mean streets," Vancouver doesn't exactly resonate like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. Extras include some behind-the-scenes material, a bio of creator-writer Chris Haddock (who was also responsible for Da Vinci's Inquest), character descriptions, and cast filmographies. --Sam Graham