Although I watched TV before the 90s and have some nostalgia for TV shows that aired before then, my love of TV didn't really start until the early 90s. And I still think of that decade as having been a peak time for TV dramas. The X-Files, of course, was my favorite show from back then, but there was also Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (the best Trek series, in my opinion), La Femme Nikita (a precursor to 24), Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Xena: Warrior Princess.
One of the lesser known shows from the time was The Pretender, which I've rediscovered on Amazon Prime. I actually have the entire series on DVD, but my home gym has no DVD player, so I'm dependent on streaming (or over-the-air during football season).
The premise of the show is that a shadowy corporation known as the Centre (note the British spelling) captured a young boy named Jarod in the early 60s. Jarod is a genius who can literally master any profession or skill almost instantly. The Centre exploited him for decades by making him perform simulations, whose outcomes the Centre would sell to the highest bidder. Some of these were military simulations, and the Centre was happy to sell to foreign governments. (Along the way, Jarod also figured out how to save the Apollo 13 astronauts, and determined that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have fired all of the shots on Dec. 22, 1963.) One day, Jarod escapes.
The formula of each episode is that Jarod finds someone who has been wronged, and using his Pretender skills, he assumes an identity that is "helpful" to the perpetrator, who he then sets up and exposes. In this way, the show was similar to The Fugitive or The A-Team or any number of past shows where the protagonist goes from town to town. One key difference, however, is that Jarod, while the hero of the show, is a pretty dark character. He seems to delight in inflicting poetic justice on the villains, psychologically tormenting them by making them feel what their victims felt. "How does it feel, seeing nothing but water in every direction, and wondering what just bumped your feet down below?" he snarls at one of his targets, who left a man to drown, and who Jarod has dumped into the ocean from shore.
Besides the weekly revenge story, there is a continuing storyline involving the Centre, which naturally wants Jarod back. Assigned to catch him are the team of Miss Parker (no first name is ever given), Sydney (no last name is ever given), and Broots. Sydney is the psychologist who worked with Jarod from his childhood days, and who doesn't want Jarod harmed and sincerely thinks the Centre is the best place for him. Miss Parker is like Emma Peel in style but just wants to catch Jarod alive, preferably, but dead is okay, so she can get back to her career in the corporate division. Broots is the tech nerd.
Meanwhile, Jarod knows nothing of his past; his parents supposedly died in a plane crash, but he comes to doubt that. The Centre holds secrets, and he keeps trying to unearth them.
As the show went on, the backstory of the Centre became more and more complicated, with Miss Parker's father (Mr. Parker), her deranged half-brother Mr. Lyle, the emphysema-suffering Mr. Raines, and more joining the cast.
Coming up on 30 years old, this show still holds up pretty well by today's standards. It ended in a cliffhanger and then was canceled. That cliffhanger was resolved by a 2001 TV movie on TNT, but then TNT aired a second TV movie that also ended on a quasi-cliffhanger, and that was the last anyone ever saw of the show...
On a related note, I once met the star, Michael T. Weiss. Of all of my celebrity encounters, this was one of the very few that did not take place in L.A. Instead, it was at O'Hare Airport, in the line waiting for a taxi in the mid-2000s. He was with a friend, so I didn't want to be an obnoxious fan, but when there was an opportune moment, I turned to him and said I really enjoyed his work in The Pretender.
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