Jimmy, meanwhile, dreams of ultimately growing legit. His primary source of illegal money is pot, a drug he sees as inevitably becoming legal in his country. In one of the show's typically well-constructed ironies, we see Reardon resist two different attempts to get him to start shipping something stronger than grass - cocaine and guns - by police agents with different agendas. One way or another, everybody wants to tell Jimmy how to run his business. His second-in-command Ronnie (John Cassini) keeps prodding his reluctant boss to hit back at the aggressive bikers, though Jimmy keeps holding out for more facts. Much like his police counterpart, he'd rather build an airtight case, even as his cohorts are all reacting with more limited information.
Where Da Vinci's Inquest provided a fairly clear demarcation between the law upholders and its breakers, Intelligence works a much murkier territory - which may be one of the reasons the series only lasted two seasons to Inquest's eight. For most American viewers, curious about the show after growing familiar with Haddock's writing and Tracey's low-key intensity, Acorn Media's new four-disc box of the first season may be the first chance they have to view this engrossing teledrama. Unlike Inquest, which still shows up on WGN late nights, Intelligence has been more difficult to catch. Acorn's 14-episode set also includes a series of "behind-the-scenes" shorts: brief interviews with cast members and a few musical collages depicting the process of filming the show - nothing too revelatory but still fun. If I have any complaints about the collection, it's with the shows' absence of closed captioning. Par for this type of drama, a lot of the characters deliver their lines whispering and muttering to each other (soft-voiced Tracey is particularly prone to this), which had me pumping up the volume so much that when the story shifted to Reardon's noisy dance club, I was practically knocked off my chair. Hey, guys, give a half-deaf geezer a break!
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