Been to Briarwood lately?

It's a remarkably normal looking place; comfortable, secure, clean, the middle-class suburban world of nice people and fairly predictable living. People who pay their taxes, shovel their sidewalks, pick up behind their doggies and go to PTA meetings.

But that's only the surface.

What if your neighbour happens to be a real-life mad scientist? What if that absent-minded but decent kid who mows the law on Saturdays can summon powers that would make Superman look like a rank amateur? What if that odd neighbour and the kid are linked by a fantastic secret that mustn't be found out?

If you're talking TV, thinks could go two ways at this point -- sinister and creepy (and probably forgettable) or hysterically funny.

Fortunately, My Secret Identity goes for giggles as well as the jugular and now that the CTV network's newest sitcom-type family show is well into its debut season (it premiered last October), it's beginning to make an encouraging dent in prime-time viewing patterns.

At last count, more than 800,000 Canadian and American fans were tuning in regularly at 7:30 p.m. every Friday -- passing up megahits like Golden Girls, Family Ties, Jeopardy! and even MASH reruns -- to follow a creatively updated version of the old fashioned action-adventure format.

Beginning a week from tonight, CTV plans to move My Secret Identity to Thursdays at the same time, hoping to expand the program's audience even further.

The half-hour show is another successful concept from Sunrise Films of Toronto and its prolific producer Paul Saltzman, whose award-winning Danger Bay (just one of his 70 or so series, documentaries, dramas and features) has been running five years on the rival CBC network.

A working consortium of Sunrise, Scholastic Productions, Telefilm Canada, MCA TV and the CTV network has given My Secret Identity enough backing power for realistic expectations in a market cluttered with comedy plot of dubious relevance and taste.

Building on the unlikely but magnetic alliance of teenager Andrew Clements (New York actor Jerry O'Connell, who played Vern Tessio in the memorable Rob Reiner film, Stand by Me) and reclusive scientist, Dr. Jeffcoate (Canadian Second City alumnus and former Dallas and Cheers semi-regular, Derek McGrath), the program's creators and promoters are hoping to deliver a lot more than their competition.

The two are linked, more often by humorous accident than intention, to resolve refreshingly human problems that special effects by themselves can't handle.

With its first season's shooting schedule completed in Toronto (a.k.a Briarwood) just last month, chances are good for a second run of episodes that will bring O'Connell and McGrath together again this summer.

To hear either describe it, both actors would like nothing better. After all, they get along as famously as peanut butter and jelly.

"Oh yeah, I just love working with a Hollywood brat," McGrath intoned in his best deadpan, as the two attempted to share a telephone line from Toronto.

His last few words were muffled by the thump of a soft missile landing near the receiver: O'Connell and McGrath tend to spice up their offstage relationship with serious contact sports like pillow fighting, or water pistols at point-blank range.

Asserting all the authority of his 39 years and undisclosed lack of height, McGrath bravely clung to his post at the wire. Between glancing blows and verbal assaults, he cheerfully dredged up biographical tidbits about how a round-eyed, squirrel-cheeked kid born in South Porcupine, northern Ontario, was lured to a career in acting.

It helped to come from a theatrical family, something McGrath and almost 15-year-old O'Connell (his birthday is tomorrow) have in common. In McGrath's case, older brother Doug played the co-starring role of Pete in Goin' Down the Road, Don Shebib's landmark 1970 feature film about a pair of naive Newfoundland "immigrants" in Toronto.

"I wanted to be a professional actor since about age five and grow into a serious dramatist," McGrath, recalled, "but if you're short and chubby, people tend to see you only in funny roles."

Despite the danger of becoming typecast, however, McGrath's career has been a roundabout of eclectic variety. He did his first fully professional work in radio plays at a station in nearby Timmins, material he described as "fairly serious stuff by a local writer who was later tried for murder. He taught me everything I know about handling lethal weapons." (Maniacal background laughter from O'Connell.)

In fact, McGrath's most lethal weapon is his wit. If it hasn't made him a household word yet, it has kept him in constant circulation.

After joining a touring production of Godspell and eventually rotating through every role in the 1960s hit musical, he found that versatility could be his ticket to bigger things. "I realized I was good at getting laughs and was gradually building a reputation for it, so it just developed from there."

[unreadable] . . . destination of California, specifically to Los Angeles, where he's lived for the past seven years.

"I still feel very Canadian, but when you've come from Timmins, all you want is to get to Hollywood," he explained.

McGrath quickly established himself as one of those familiar supporting-character faces who never seems to have an offscreen name.

Remember Andy-Andy, the good-natured psychopath from Cheers? Or how about the unctuous Oswald Valentine, Sue-Ellen's business associate on Dallas? Or that I've-seen-him-somewhere-before fellow, popping in and out of guest spots on 9 to 5, Married With Children, the short-lived AfterMash, and a virtual TV Who's Who of other shows. And that's not counting the commercials; he's done his share for consumerism as well.

On the large screen, he's played in The Last Detail (starring Jack Nicholson), Mr. Mom, Police Academy IV, and the soon-to-be-released Daddy's Little Girl. Though he seems to downplay it a little, McGrath is also an accomplished writer and director in his "spare" time, talents that haven't been formally called upon yet in the making of My Secret Identity.

But like O'Connell, McGrath has had a good deal of practical influence in shaping his character's personality. He admits to some initial misgivings about portraying a hermit-like eccentric bachelor, reduced to near collapse in the presence of women. He wasn't the actor originally tagged for the part either, but auditioned "because the idea appealed to me."

Beginning with the pilot story -- in which young Andrew stumbles upon one of his neighbour's more bizarre basement experiments and gets zapped by a mysterious photon beam -- Jeffcoate is forced into friendship and gradual socialization (even with women), "but it's a family show, so we keep it all pretty close to home and make sure he doesn't do anything unsuitable."

The following 23 episodes develop into a zany mentor/student relationship, one in which it's hard to tell who is really responsible for whom.

"I'm not as nerdy as Jeffcoate," McGrath is quick to mention. "He's a guy who really needs help and at first I had to think very non-seriously about how he's react to things I could normally handle. After a while, I found myself relating spontaneously to him. It's that feeling of knowing the penny has dropped and you're on the right track."

Another salvo of cushions finally sends the receiver clanging to the floor. The "Hollywood brat" gets his hands on it and suddenly turns into a really nice guy, smooth as Tom Cruise, winsome as the perpetually surprised Tom Hanks, and as confidant as Ultraman, champion of Briarwood's downtrodden and oppressed.

Ultra-who??

To explain, briefly, once zapped, Andrew find himself endowed with the ability to fly, levitate objects, and move at warp speed, just like the comic book heroes that fill his spare-time fantasizing: what better all-inclusive handle than Ultraman?

It's a role that suits Manhattan native O'Connell to a T.

"I guess I'm a lot like Andrew to begin with, because I've always collected comic books," he opened breathlessly. "And people say I have a very active, uh, perhaps over-active, imagination. I like girls a lot, too.

But O'Connell is no brash upstart when it comes to his profession.

He's been acting almost since he could walk, began earning money at it seven years ago when he made his first commercial, and demonstrated solid, deep-down ability at age 11 in Stand by Me. Four years later, the baby fat is long gone, he's "about two feet taller" (enough to tower half a hand over his elder co-star), and the boy soprano voice is barely holding its own against puberty.

Unlike the casual, fun-loving teen he portrays, however, O'Connell has very definite adult goals.

"I've always wanted to be in acting and right now, I enjoy comedy roles the most. I really like it when people can play off each other and keep things going at a very intense level, so working with Derek has been just terrific. I think you absolutely have to get along well off the camera, because if we didn't, it would be much harder to make people believe in our TV characters."

Working in My Secret Identity has also expanded the environments in which O'Connell now feels at home.

"I live in Manhattan and that's about as urban as you can get; then I went to a rural place for Stand by Me, which was a totally different way of living; now I'm sort of in-between with Andrew, because he comes from the suburbs and the episodes take place in both city and country locations."

Although he finds no noticeable difference between Canadians and Americans, O'Connell has become an enthusiastic fan of Toronto. "People here are more interesting than in most cities and I've had a lot of fun getting around and doing things; it's my second home now."

He also likes the fact that outdoor scenes are shot more or less as they really are. You won't necessarily see landmarks like the CN Tower or the still-futuristic city hall on upcoming My Secret Identity episodes, "but they don't remove all the Ontario license plates from cars and that kind of stuff."

Instead, the city's ethnic and cosmopolitan character becomes a major asset. One storyline takes Jeffcoate and Andrew to Toronto's Chinese community, where the subjects of gang-crime, traditional culture and inter-racial dating are all dealt with in sensitive, unpretentious encounters.

"What I like about the series," O'Connell summed up, "is that both of the main characters get to learn new things and grow as people. Dr. J (Jeffcoate) gradually comes out of his shell and meets more people and Andrew realizes that he has to take responsibility for the powers."

It's pretty solid reasoning for a kid who knows there's a lot of growing yet to do -- and that he won't always get the last word.

McGrath calmly unloaded his water pistol, followed by a burst of static and O'Connell's gasp of surprise.

Gotcha. Interview over.