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 [Note to ed: I know; it's a Spoonerism], money-laundering, dirty laundry laundering. What more can a viewer ask for? And all that’s in the first chapter!

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 two main characters are Jimmy “The Weed King” Reardon, who is moving hundreds of pounds of AA pot weekly, while at the same time juggling a legitimate shipping company, being part owner of a titty bar, and dealing with a cokehead ex- and their tweenager daughter, and a loose cannon for a brother. And in the opposing corner we have Mary Spalding of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services, CSIS. Mary is battling her own demons in the form of a cheating husband, employees trying to sell her down the river, backstabbing colleagues, and politicians doing ... well, what they’re good at: being slimy politicians.

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.