The Pretender (TV series)
| The Pretender | |
|---|---|
The Pretender intertitle
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| Created by | Steven Long Mitchell Craig W. Van Sickle |
| Starring |
Michael T. Weiss Andrea Parker Patrick Bauchau Jon Gries |
| Theme music composer |
John Debney (season one) Rick Patterson (season two and three) Velton Ray Bunch (season four) Mark Leggett (season four, co-composer) |
| Composer(s) |
John Debney (pilot] Charles Sydnor (1.1 [co-composer], 1.2, 1.3) Velton Ray Bunch (all other episodes and TV movies) |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 86 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Mitchell/Van Sickle Productions (entire run) NBC Studios MTM Enterprises (season 1) 20th Century Fox Television (seasons 2-4) |
| Distributor |
NBCUniversal International Television Distribution 20th Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Original release | September 19, 1996 – May 13, 2000 |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by | The Pretender 2001 |
| Website | |
The Pretender is an American action television series that aired on NBC from 1996 to 2000 as a part of the NBC action programming block, Thrillogy.
Following NBC's cancellation of the series, two television movies picking up where the series left off were aired on TNT: The Pretender 2001 and The Pretender: Island of the Haunted. In 2013, creators Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle began updating the story with a series of books and graphic novels. The first, The Pretender: Rebirth, was published on October 7, 2013.
According to show creators Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle, the character of Jarod was inspired by serial impostor Ferdinand Waldo Demara.
Jarod (Michael T. Weiss) is a child prodigy who is abducted at a young age and raised in a think tank called the Centre, based in the fictional town of Blue Cove, Delaware. Told that his parents have died, Jarod is assigned to the care of a man named Sydney (Patrick Bauchau), a psychiatrist working for the Centre. During Jarod's youth, Sydney mentors the boy and regularly coaches him through complex simulations designed to exploit his intellect for real life application. As an adult, Jarod discovers that the Centre is using data gathered from his responses for nefarious purposes, such as illegal black ops and engineering the deaths of others. Feeling responsible, Jarod escapes the Centre. Soon afterward, he discovers that the people whom he believed to be his parents actually weren't. Jarod has an anomaly in his blood that a father or mother would share and neither of his supposed parents do.
The Centre is continually tracking down Jarod's location. The team in charge of recapturing him is Sydney, computer expert Broots (Jon Gries), and "Miss Parker" (Andrea Parker), a dogged and formidable operative who was raised in the Centre and knew Jarod as a child. Though she is no longer an active field operative, she is "recalled from Corporate" during the pilot episode and put in charge of Jarod's recapture. While Sydney feels loyalty to Jarod and wishes his safe return, Miss Parker remarks that her mandate only says it is preferable to bring in the Pretender alive, not mandatory. Fearing for Jarod's safety, Sydney at times undermines Miss Parker and will directly prevent her from using lethal methods. In the pilot, Parker questions Sydney's commitment to the Centre, telling him he can be a scientist for the Centre or "mommy" to Jarod but not both.
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Wikipedia