Who Is Bad

One of the nice things about Netflix (and related services) is the chance to watch television from other countries (in addition to news -- I get a number of foreign news reports through the satellite service; frequently interesting to see how stories get treated by different parts of the world.)  Two I have particularly liked are Intelligence (a Canadian show) and MI-5 (British).  Intelligence is about an undercover police agency and the criminals they deal with, some of whom are long-time informants.  (Interestingly, the head of one of the criminal organizations is an informant.)  The basic police stories are abotu the same.  What is interesting is the degree to which, at least in the first couple of seasons, the police characters are complicated and political.  In US shows, complicated means sad or bad home life.  In this show, it is all internal politics and back-stabbing.  That has been an interesting twist to the shows.  None is the voice of reason and good, and they are all setting one another up for failure.  MI-5 was that way in the start, with interesting and surprising betrayals and portrayals.  Spies spying on spies.  The other aspect that is notable is that the Americans are all cast in an overall dim light  -- treacherous and bullyiing.  More nuanced than that, but not the heroes.  It is a change.  MI-5 turns into silliness after a couple of seasons, but there is a view of Britain as  embattled between the great powers of the US and Russia (China hardly shows up at all).