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Peacock’s Forgotten 13-Episode Spy Show Is Still a Near-Perfect Weekend Binge 6 Years Later

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Whether or not he enjoys it, David Schwimmer‘s career was always going to be defined by his iconic role as Ross “Pivot!” Gellar in Friends. After all, him and his five co-stars made history in one of the most watched and beloved sitcoms of all-time. But while that will always be true, Schwimmer has gone on to have an expansive career, including credits in directing, voice-acting, and his scene-stealing moments in TV shows like American Crime Story and Will & Grace.

Among his lesser-seen titles is a 2020 British series that never got the attention or love it deserved. Alongside Ted Lasso star Nick Mohammed, Schwimmer created another iconic character in Intelligence, a hidden gem series that ran for two seasons and a one-episode special.

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David Schimmer Steals the Show in ‘Intelligence’

Longtime fans of Friends or Schwimmer’s work will perhaps be unsurprised to hear that Schwimmer absolutely commands the screen in Intelligence. The series, created and written by Mohammed himself, follows Schwimmer as Jerry Bernstein, a pompous NSA agent who joins a cyber-crimes unit at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). From the get-go, Schwimmer’s Jerry is clearly different to Ross. While both characters are known for their intelligence and expertise in their fields, Ross had a goofiness and softness to him that made him endearing to audiences. Jerry, on the other hand, comes off as arrogant, harsh, and quite problematic, at least in the beginning.

Through his hard shell, however, Jerry still manages to be quite funny. “Chief among [the cast] is Schwimmer’s beautifully unhinged, physically invigorating, and surprisingly vulnerable leading performance,” wrote Gregory Lawrence in his review for Collider after Intelligence‘s release. “His Jerry is unhinged in the best way possible. In these six episodes, Schwimmer reveals himself to be a brusque, tight, and utterly professional physical comedian; there are pratfalls, triple takes, slides across surfaces, all delivered with panache and intention.”



















































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Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz
Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In?
The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs

Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.

🚨The Pitt

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🏥ER

💉Grey’s

🔬House

🩺Scrubs

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01

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A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct?
Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.





02

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Why did you go into medicine in the first place?
The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.





03

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What do you actually want from the people you work with?
Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.





04

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You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it?
Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.





05

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How would your colleagues describe the way you work?
Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.





06

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How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure?
Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.





07

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What does this job cost you personally?
Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?





08

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At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back?
The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.





Your Assignment Has Been Made
You Belong In…
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Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.


Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center

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The Pitt

You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.

  • You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
  • You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
  • You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
  • Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.


County General Hospital, Chicago

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ER

You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.

  • You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
  • You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
  • You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
  • ER is television about endurance. You have it.


Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle

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Grey’s Anatomy

You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.

  • You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
  • Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
  • You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
  • It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.


Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ

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House

You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.

  • You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
  • You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
  • Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
  • The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.


Sacred Heart Hospital, California

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Scrubs

You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.

  • You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
  • You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
  • You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
  • Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.

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Schwimmer Aside, ‘Intelligence’ Is an Impressive Ensemble Comedy

Nick Mohammed and David Schwimmer in Intelligence
Image via Peacock

But while Schwimmer certainly shines on the show, Intelligence works because it’s an ensemble comedy with a cast that compliments his energy. Mohammed, best known for his role as the shy yet secretly cunning Nate in Ted Lasso, continues his streak as the timid but never-to-be-underestimated Joseph Harries, a people-pleasing and socially awkward computer analyst. Alongside Jerry, they become an unlikely duo, and the perfect counterpart for one another onscreen. Together, their chemistry carries the show and delivers hilarious moments time and time again.

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You can’t do anything without your best friend!

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The cast is then completed by the rest of the GCHQ team, led by Christine Clark (Sylvestra Le Touzel), a veteran intelligence officer, master hacker Tuva Olson (Gana Bayarsaikhan), and squirrelly cryptoanalyst Mary Needham (Jane Stanness). “Le Touzel plays the ‘frustrated voice of reason’ with perfection, and I love when the show lets her have a twinkle in her eye herself,” Lawrence described in his review. “Stanness’ character could be one-note in another actor’s hands, but she gives her an intriguing amount of depth underneath the surface. For my money, Bayarsaikhan might be the breakout performer of the show. Her Tuva is enigmatic, strong, sharpened to a diamond force, punching us in the gut with her no-nonsense attitude.”

With all that said, while Intelligence has flown under the radar for most audiences since its release in 2020, the series unexpectedly meshes a workplace comedy with a spy series, leading to a fresh new take on both genres. With Schwimmer front and center and Mohammed shining once again as the sidekick, Intelligence has continued to establish itself as one of Peacock’s most must-see comedies.


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Release Date

2020 – 2023-00-00

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Network

Sky One

Directors
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Matt Lipsey


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