Whatever happens with the US version, Haddock is thrilled that he has been able to carve out a magnificent career in his hometown of Vancouver. "It's a delight to work on stuff that lets you explore your own craft and test yourself and work with basically a family of crew and cast, an ensemble, in your own city. There's nothing like it. It's very unusual and I'm very lucky to have done it."
Though he's been very vocal in his criticism of the network where he spent much of his career – including in that TV, eh? interview – he speaks very highly of his time at the CBC.
"I've been able to advance my craft, and that's a huge thing for me. I've always believed that I'd hit 50 and my skills as a writer will come together, and that I've really just been testing and tuning and experimenting the previous years of my career, stepping into where I finally got my craft together as a writer enough to express the stuff I want to express. Because what I want to express is a rich brew of life and I think previous to this, maybe I didn't have the chops to do this."
"I certainly honed my skills on Da Vinci and got taken to great places by Nick Campbell. When you have somebody as an actor who can take everything you throw at him, your knuckle ball, and they smack it, those are great learning experiences. I had the same experience with Stuart Margolin back on Mom PI,the first show I ever produced. I got to work with Angel [Margolin's character on The Rockford Files] and he taught me everything there was about working with actors."
He compared the theoretical experience of working in Canada for five years on Intelligence with the crapshoot of working in the US: "Do you want to sit down and conduct a great orchestra and get paid nothing, or get paid a ton of money and conduct a bunch of actors who are all over the map and not playing your music?"
He's quick to point out that he doesn't expect the FOX version of Intelligence to play out that way, of course, and clearly relishes the experience of revisiting his pet project. "It's an opportunity to take what I think is a great concept and fit it into a different perspective, a different society," he said before praising the network as well as Wells, his production partner, who has not only opened doors, but fostered a great working relationship. "He's treated me with respect, with 'you are the creator of this; I am the facilitator of your ideas.'"
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