"Adderly": the "Canadian" James Bond TV show
That is, underfunded, poorly-shot, generically "North American", with a Canadian "aw shucks" attitude (charm?) about murder and foreign agents operating on [ENTER YOUR WESTERN COUNTRY HERE]'s soil
I was, and am still, a big Canadian pop-culture fan. “Adderly”, a show that aired from 1986-1988 for two seasons, was a tv show that I watched as a kid for the only reason that it was Canadian (similar to “My Secret Identity”).
At first I thought this show was some kind of CTV “on the cheap” Canadian show, but the production background of the show is a little more complicated.
CBS actually produced the show as some kind of low-budget, “first-run program” for a late night (or midnight) time slot. It first aired on CBS in the USA and then on Global TV in Canada; it is very likely a significant part of its budget was funded by Canada as well.
The show was made in Canada by American producers and based on an American book written by an American writer (“Pocock & Pitt” by Elliot Baker, who also wrote the premiere episode and a couple more episodes of “Adderly”), utilizing low-cost Canadian actors and crew.
According to The History of Canadian Broadcasting, “CBS initially requested a change in the show’s setting from Europe to an unidentified North American town”. This “unidentified North American town” turned out to be, shockingly, Toronto.
Shot in Toronto on 16mm film to reduce costs, and avoiding any recognizable landscapes in order to assert the overall “generic” bland look of “Anywhere, [Insert Country Here]” look, “Adderly” for all intents and purposes became one of the foundational templates for “Canadian” shows shot to this day: the generic, faceless budget studio lot-cum-city, manned by Canadian labour, governed by American/foreign executives, with generic stories that are geared for the mass sale of the “product” to whatever network was cheap and desperate for it.
It was, for lack of a better word—or perhaps exactly the word— “filler”. It was the Oreo-cookie knock-off in the dollar corner store.
The show itself appeared and disappeared with nary a blip in the pop culture space. As the Wall Street Journal reviewed succinctly of “Adderly” back in the day, “Think of ''The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'' done at bargain prices.”
L to R: Winston Rekert as V. H. (Virgil Homer), Ken Pogue as Major Jonathan B. Clack, Dixie Seatle as Mona Ellerby, & Jonathan Welsh as Melville Greenspan
Adderly: “The Spy with the Mace-Crushed Hand”
For all its very apparent blandness, I was still interested in the show. I think what really fascinated me about this show was the premise: “Adderly” is about a former spy, “V.H. Adderly”, of the fictional government spy agency “ISI”—the “International Security and Intelligence”, either a CSIS reference (which as a kid I thought of at the time), or more likely given the American oversight of this show, a CIA stand-in with a generic name that references no place and time.
Detailed in the trope-y sleep-disturbed, sweaty jerk-wake-from-sleep flashback: Adderly gets captured in some intelligence undercover job in low-rent stand-in for Russia, “Eastern Germany”—the first clue that this show was before 1987—and gets severely injured by a shaved-head villain (in a very Blofeld-esque homage), who smashes his hand in with a mace in a torture attempt to extract information from Adderly about a “mole”.
The mace—the underrated character off-screen in “Adderly” that through its sheer presence of traumatic memory, ripples throughout the show like a auditory ripple of maiming destruction.
Adderly—the former “top dog” spy of the ISI—is now (permanently? Not sure as they never show the disabled hand, only that it’s in a glove and Adderly can’t move it apparently) disabled.
The injured mitt—both the symbolic and actual representation of the spy’s “neutering” of his status—Adderly keeps always-jacketed in a sinister-looking black glove, which is then further oft-hidden in his jacket pocket, to doubly hide his “hideous” deformity (again on the scale of what actually defines “hideousness”, the viewer is never allowed to make that determination as—no lookee at handee).
Adderly is constantly shown navigating his world with one hand—opening his car door with his good hand, or in the case of the premiere episode, somehow besting the villain by shooting a bow and arrow with—you guessed it—one hand. Adderly, you see, is not disabled—he’s differently-abled.
Adderly’s deformed hand. How is it deformed exactly? The viewer is never shown the hand itself…
His boss “Major Clack” (oh how heavy the symbolic hammer hits the head here), however not recognizing Adderly’s differently-abled-ness, in an act of apparent mercy—or to stick his asset somewhere, out of sight and out of mind—“assigns”, or sentences, Adderly to a desk job in a dingy Brutalist basement spin-off organization of ISI titled “Miscellaneous Affairs”, manned by a by-the-book, uptight bureaucrat Greenspan—small, glasses, you know, stereotypically the NERD!—who you just know is always gonna be a thorn in Adderly’s side; and a relatively attractive, (but not too attractive) “bookish” secretary (also a NERD!) Mona, who is always typing on a typewriter (typing what? No one knows) or reading romance and adventure novels, and relaying her disappointment to Adderly—and conversely her thirst for adventure—about how “nothing happens” at this low-rent intelligence office.
Adderly and Mona: the Canadian James Bond/Miss Moneypenny
Ah, but things won’t ever be boring with Adderly around…
Adderly, horribly deformed as he is—is also horribly bored at his new posting. Adderly’s voiced desire is to “earn his way” back into the ISI’s good graces, and “get re-assigned” to Eastern Germany”, and so to both salvage his reputation and blunt his boredom, he takes on various mundane jobs that seem innocuous enough for “Miscellaneous Affairs”, but due to Adderly’s brilliance & insight, are revealed to be cases that threaten national and international security, and cases that only the best spy—Adderly—can deal with. On his own, without any resources…no James Bond rocket pack, dynamite pen, or even a barely functioning pistol. Even Adderly’s car is a white beater piece of shit…a more surer sign of how far from grace Adderly has fallen, and how far he has to climb back up.
This is the structural basis of the show. Onto the acting!
Winston Rekert—the actor, the legend…Michael Landon’s long-lost Canadian twin
Michael Landon of “Little House on the Prairie” and “Highway to Heaven” fame, meet Winston Rekert. Okay: you do see it, don’t you?
How does—how can—Winston Rekert play Adderly…a Canadian actor in a low-budget tv show that was meant for nothing but filler?
His look: Michael Landon, but much lower-paid, and on a tv show barely anyone watches in the midnight hour. Rekert’s look ain’t gonna get noticed except in comparison to Michael Landon.
But Rekert’s demeanour, his actorial tackling of the subject at hand—actually pretty cool.
Adderly wears a bespoke suit of many (many) colours it seems; and with running shoes—a sign of the 80s where that style of “business-casual” began to evolve & rise from the embryonic muck, like the T-1000 splurching its way back to human form. That Adderly-suit is more than just a sign of the times; it’s a sign of Adderly’s attitude—he’s casual, but he means business, and the casualness is a trick, a distraction, from his capable, strategic mind.
Reckert’s Adderly is “trustworthy”—look at those innocent eyes!
But it’s not just the suit: Winston Rekert plays Adderly low-key; he’s quietly confident, forcing the bureaucratic Greenspan to come to his office in the premiere episode instead of Greenspan forcing Adderly to come to his office. A scene of quiet power, of show-don’t-tell, where Adderly knows his power and place, and doesn’t bow to anyone.
But Adderly as Rekert portrays him is not an overbearing jerk either, like an American Jason Bourne, nor is he preening in his bodaciousness and black-oiled loquacious hair, as a James Bond would. Rekert is not obviously good-looking; he’s not obviously athletic; he’s not obviously anything. But the more you watch it, one notices Rekert plays Adderly as a guy with a haunting past, with a conscience, but who’s also smart enough to figure stuffs out, and get things dun. And the secret sauce under all that performance is—much like Michael Landon—you get the sense that Adderly is inherently a very decent human being, and you can trust him. Him being capable is merely icing on the…decent trust-y cake.
It is indeed implied in the show (from what I read, I didn’t really see it) that Major Clack assigned Adderly to the “Miscellaneous Affairs” desk to make sure his biggest asset can operate even more under the wire—avoiding that “pesky” government oversight that all those more mediocre secret agents whinge about.
This is not to say Adderly wasn’t a man of action—he could kick ass and wield a gun with the best of them. In the premiere episode, he shot an arrow (and hit the bulls-eye—with one hand!), rassled an out-of-control car whose tire was tampered with and blew out (driving with one hand!), and fought a hitman in arm-to-arm combat (with, you guessed it, one hand!)—oddly enough, on a Toronto freeway, in full view of cars on either side, shot with intercutting mid-shots and extreme wide shots from far away to miss the stunt-double’s probably very heterogeneous appearance with Adderly.
I don’t really want to read too much into the “Canadian-ness” of the character of Adderly—essentially the show was an American show with a Canadian wrapper to it (or vice-versa?), but despite the negative connotations one could give to Adderly for the cheap production and fairly dismal writing, the acting overall was actually pretty decent, with Reckert’s Adderly managing to bridge the gap between British superiority and American bragadaccio, to create a performance based on the triumvirate of decency, capability, and trustworthiness—the “just right” of the three bears’ porridge. The cast including Rekert’s strong performance brought the overall production up.
But when the only way you can go, is up, that’s…not nothing?
The overall impact on Canadiana media landscape
The mid-80’s were an interesting time for the burgeoning Canadian tv “industry”—I use that term loosely because invariably what it meant then was what it means now—American funding & executive control, using some Canadian acting talent (but not too much) and Canadian gruntwork—and lotsa Canadian tax breaks and funding. Americans overall began to see Canada as the make-up and lipsticked hussy she was, willing to sell her wares via a nearby cheap place to shoot (“Whut, Canada is just above us?!?”), and offering the cheap Canadian dollar plus the Canadian support through grants and tax credits. I mean at that point, Canada is basically funding American productions 100%…I mean, it’s just crazy to think that Canada with that kind of money could have demanded 100% Canadian content on its own domestic media companies, & funded its own quality media industry to produce quality 100% Canadian productions to satisfy its own domestic audience—and eventually exported its products for profit internationally.
Overall, the spin-off effects from “Adderly” was Rekert’s opportunity to get “Neon Rider” produced—a show I’ll take a look at later—and the beginning template of the American indoctrination and corporatization of Canadian media production “industry”.
Winston Rekert, June 10, 1949 – September 14, 2012
RIP Winston Rekert.