InSecurity - Episode 101 - The Doctor - Review/Recap

InSecurity is a new show on the Canada's own CBC. It is described as an action comedy that succeeds in skewering spy shows without discrimination. The premise is fun and dialogue is tongue in cheek. The fictional NISA National Intelligence and Security Agency is Canada elite intelligence service. Intelligence is what this crew doesn't rely on to crack a case..

In the opening episode, Alex Cranston (Natalie Lisinska) the team leader is captured by uranium smugglers. The rest of the team work on rescuing her.

I did start watching it three minutes into the program, so missed a good chunk of the episode. There are some highlights worth mentioning.

The look of the show is polished.

The torture sequence really stood out for me. To begin with, Alex finds out the titular doctor who was going to torture information from her, is a guy she went to high school with. At first they reminisce on school days. During the torture, in between the electric shocks, they exchange insults. It's let out that the doctor has nut allergies. After overpowering some hapless thugs, Alex calls for help. Before her torturer comes back she eats her lunch, peanut butter sandwich. She then kisses him, sending him into shock. But he's prepared; he has adrenaline. She quickly dispatches him, then injects him with the adrenaline.

At the end, two of her team arrives just after the doctor goes down. Before they can get away, the goons come back. And the idiot on the team come in with his gun hits her arm by mistake. (Oops! Had the sequence of events kind of wrong before.)

Here is where the comedy comes in. It's not only in the funny dialogue. It's in the acting. It's in the prank falls and high kicks. No blood is ever spilled.

While every one of the cast is a caricature of its more dramatic cousins, the one who stand out more is Benjamin N'udu (Richard Yearwood), an ace spy from the nation of Ligeria. In this episode he eats the evidence, a three day old pizza found on the ground. "It's a bit gravelly." He would love to chase it down with liquid ice cream. His weapon of choice is a large knife.

If anyone can poke fun at a genre, it's us Canadians. We got a winner here.

http://www.cbc.ca/insecurity/