Extremely affluent Senator Thomas Woodside (Don Harron) is marrying off his daughter and requests that the government supply security for the wedding. The better compliment of International Security and Intelligence (ISI) agents are on assignment elsewhere. The absurd detail is one none of them would think was worth their time anyway. The obscure department Miscellaneous Affairs somehow appears to be an answer instead of "Go to a private firm, Senator! YOU can afford it. The taxpayers CAN'T!".
ISI keeps Miscellaneous Affairs in the basement of it's headquarters near the boiler room. Why the department even exists is something of a mystery. A bitter pill of a bureaucrat Melville Greenspan (Jonathan Welsh) is in charge and his priority is keeping the budget low and the department profile even lower. He thinks that is how he keeps civil service cutbacks from eliminating his job. He is not entirely wrong.
The bored secretary Mona Ellerby (Dixie Seatle - a Canadian performer with a VERY American-sounding name) is generally found reading a book and sometimes it is spy fiction. She and Greenspan get to keep their tedious, almost entirely meaningless jobs in a way many bureaucrats and government employees have throughout history i.e. by always being present in the event that somebody calls which for them is extremely unlikely.
The frequency of the calls increases dramatically with the presence of V.H. Adderly (Winston Rekert) - a veteran secret service operative who got his left hand crushed by torture whilst in the clutches of the opposition. Transferred to Miscellaneous Affairs he is still a great intelligence agent and longs to make a comeback. ISI refuses to look beyond his disability which is unfortunate considering he finds deadly trouble in even the most mundane, nuisance details assigned him.
Melville dispatches Adderly to the wedding KNOWING it to be a mundane, nuisance detail but hoping that Adderly will still complete the task adequately. His primary concern is that Adderly is appropriately attired and acquits himself well in a manner that won't reflect poorly on the department. It puts Adderly on the trail of an international assassin whom Adderly must stop, and do so single-handedly. We get a solid template of the formula for future episodes.
The Canadian setting was, of course, obscured to the point of being nearly invisible. That was something TV and movie producers did in Canada to maximize the marketability of the production to American audiences. The casting, the locations and the tell-tale softening of vowels in the dialogue betrayed where it was really produced and who it was produced by. But it was somehow thought that American audiences wouldn't notice and that Canadian audiences wouldn't mind.
This episode featured guest-stars Gary Farmer, Lisa Howard and Peter Krantz. They were young and still learning but they would stick with the industry long enough to build impressive resumes and do so here in Canada - either in domestically produced content or augmenting foreign productions shot here. They toiled in a relative anonymity which is something that is very difficult for a performer to have to do and shows an uncommon attachment to the craft. For many active on Canada's entertainment scene the process IS the reward.
The established guest-star Don Harron - the one they hoped might lure in audiences, was one the Canadian entertainment industry never quite knew what to do with. Here he is quite passable playing a supporting role. He mostly did supporting guest roles on American TV up until he hit big in America on the syndicated series Hee-Haw, a show he departed in 1982. Believe it or not he had a TV talk show that went as poorly as any of the English-language ones (Paul Soles, Alan Thicke, Ralph Benmergui etc) we've had in Canada.
ISI keeps Miscellaneous Affairs in the basement of it's headquarters near the boiler room. Why the department even exists is something of a mystery. A bitter pill of a bureaucrat Melville Greenspan (Jonathan Welsh) is in charge and his priority is keeping the budget low and the department profile even lower. He thinks that is how he keeps civil service cutbacks from eliminating his job. He is not entirely wrong.
The bored secretary Mona Ellerby (Dixie Seatle - a Canadian performer with a VERY American-sounding name) is generally found reading a book and sometimes it is spy fiction. She and Greenspan get to keep their tedious, almost entirely meaningless jobs in a way many bureaucrats and government employees have throughout history i.e. by always being present in the event that somebody calls which for them is extremely unlikely.
The frequency of the calls increases dramatically with the presence of V.H. Adderly (Winston Rekert) - a veteran secret service operative who got his left hand crushed by torture whilst in the clutches of the opposition. Transferred to Miscellaneous Affairs he is still a great intelligence agent and longs to make a comeback. ISI refuses to look beyond his disability which is unfortunate considering he finds deadly trouble in even the most mundane, nuisance details assigned him.
Melville dispatches Adderly to the wedding KNOWING it to be a mundane, nuisance detail but hoping that Adderly will still complete the task adequately. His primary concern is that Adderly is appropriately attired and acquits himself well in a manner that won't reflect poorly on the department. It puts Adderly on the trail of an international assassin whom Adderly must stop, and do so single-handedly. We get a solid template of the formula for future episodes.
The Canadian setting was, of course, obscured to the point of being nearly invisible. That was something TV and movie producers did in Canada to maximize the marketability of the production to American audiences. The casting, the locations and the tell-tale softening of vowels in the dialogue betrayed where it was really produced and who it was produced by. But it was somehow thought that American audiences wouldn't notice and that Canadian audiences wouldn't mind.
This episode featured guest-stars Gary Farmer, Lisa Howard and Peter Krantz. They were young and still learning but they would stick with the industry long enough to build impressive resumes and do so here in Canada - either in domestically produced content or augmenting foreign productions shot here. They toiled in a relative anonymity which is something that is very difficult for a performer to have to do and shows an uncommon attachment to the craft. For many active on Canada's entertainment scene the process IS the reward.
The established guest-star Don Harron - the one they hoped might lure in audiences, was one the Canadian entertainment industry never quite knew what to do with. Here he is quite passable playing a supporting role. He mostly did supporting guest roles on American TV up until he hit big in America on the syndicated series Hee-Haw, a show he departed in 1982. Believe it or not he had a TV talk show that went as poorly as any of the English-language ones (Paul Soles, Alan Thicke, Ralph Benmergui etc) we've had in Canada.