Adderly

It's been a long time since I thought of this show. I was watching the Chuck Norris movie "Hit Man" and saw Ken Pogue. I remembered that I used to see him in some Canadian show about a spy that had much the same feel as another favorite, "MacGyver". I couldn't quite remember what the show was until I searched this site.

Now I remember more about it, such as the pencil pushing boss and the slightly daft secretary. I see that it went on for a couple of years and hope that it will show up again in syndication, such as TVLand or something.

I don't remember lots of specifics, but I do remember I tried never to miss an episode.

I used to love this show. It was one of a group of shows that were being produced in Ontario.

The lead character of V.H. Adderly was a former field agent for an intelligence agency. The opening credits show how he got set-up and captured by the bad guys, who maim one of his hands. Unable to continue in the field he gets reassigned to a desk in a department that handles such important matters as escorting "chipmunk scouts" on field trips.

Naturally Adderly sought every opportunity to prove he was still one of the best, even if he had to "loosely interpret" his orders. Ably assisted by Mona, the office secretary who dreams of being a female James Bond, and hampered by their bean counting rule following supervisor, the team never failed to provide a fun entertaining episode.

If they'd release the series on DVD I'd be in line when the store opened.

This was a charming little series about an oddball spy agency with a main character of a spy who suffers a disability in his arm after enemy agents torture him and damage the nerves in it. So now he works behind a desk doing paperwork and bureaucratic things for a pencil-pushing boss, except when he sneakily works on more exciting missions, usually with the help of their airhead secretary. It was silly and low budget and simple but also very fun and well done. Good writing and some surprisingly good acting make this show a real winner and diamond in the rough.

"Adderly" is not of the caliber of "Twin Peaks" or "24," but it is a sharply written, clever little show that will appeal to anyone stuck in a menial job. Winston Reckert plays off his aging-pretty-boy-looks well, and Dixie Settle is a nice romantic foil. All in all, this is memorable Canadian series.

I have most of the episodes on tape and have almost worn them out rewatching them. This is so funny, so good, so sweet. It perks me up all over to watch it. The DVD is ruinously expensive but still...I might get it some day.

The theme song is perfect. The relationships are wonderful. The episode where hen-pecked Melville (Debbie beat him down and he beat Adderly and Mona down) got involved with a beautiful female spy behind the Iron Curtain was choice. The one where Adderly went home to see his parents, just terrific. And Mona! Mona who would have loved to be an agent if life hadn't led another way, and enjoyed her spy novels but was nobody's idea of a femme fatale. Melville and Mona both wished they could be like Adderly, but Mona got to help him while Melville for most of the series was just an obstructive force. And Maj. Clack who seemed to secretly want to get Adderly back into full service if he could earn it by showing the hand didn't matter and he wanted it enough.

And the quips! One I remember was when Adderly was playing catch in the windowless basement office and held up his smashed gloved hand and his ball mitt on the other hand, clapped them together and said, "Flippers!"

As the other reviewer said, much of this is an office comedy. Some of it is about overcoming handicaps of all sorts, whether Adderly's hand or Melville's cowardice. And part of it is about making at least a few of your dreams come true as all three of our office dungeon-mates have a chance to run with the big dogs, and do amazingly well.

I dropped it down to 9 instead of a 10 because sometimes Mona's speech pattern when she is "thinking on her feet" in difficult situations gets on my nerves. And of course the whole Iron Curtain thing is now over. But it's fun to see international espionage from the Canadian point of view and having Canadians save the world instead of Americans.