No. 264: FREEMAN ASMUNDSON, DUKE AVILDSEN, BRAD SHADE & JASON PRIESTLEY / A not so short story, cloak & dagger ... or maybe hockey sweater & scalpel.

A bit of the fictional world around The Code. A SubStack entry just for friends.

Private Eyes was No. 1 in Canadian TV ratings for pretty much its six-season run on Global. I never got used to seeing my name in the opening credits—"based on The Code by G.B. Joyce.” I wouldn’t have if Global had decided to order a seventh season or if was still in production (and the cheques kept on coming in). Occasionally I’ll drift towards what might have been. Not that lasting six seasons isn’t a thing, ditto being syndicated in 120 international markets. (More Jason Priestley’s thing and the producers’ thing, Piller/Segan’s thing, than my thing.) But what might have been if COVID hadn’t disrupted scheduling, if ownership of the network hadn’t been in flux and transition?

I try to look forward more than backward, but this popped up the other day in my Facebook memories: a short story titled “Luzhniki, ’89,” something that I had written about 14 years ago, when I was trying to find a voice for The Code’s protagonist, when I was trying to establish the storyworld and the cast of c…