Dashes of slapstick and farce pepper Seeing Things, which had remarkably little violence for a show centered on murder. In one episode, scrambling around chair legs and under tables in a nightclub, Louis escaped by biting his pursuer in the leg. Another distinctive feature of the series was its steady stream of ad-libbed one-liners. The timing was crisp and the delivery was always throwaway and spontaneous. Running gags were found in most episodes. Seeing Things was very Canadian, with its sharp eye for the brief obsessions of American popular culture. These were some­ times deliberately subverted and sometimes mocked. Many of the jokes are topical, political, or social in their thrust. The series satirized the military, aging hippies, psychic fairs, beauty pageants, and hockey. There were also occasional complex takes on ethical questions, touching moments between characters, and solid cameo performances. The series provided self­-reflexive moments, such as when Marge (played by Martha Gibson, Del Grande's wife), Louie's wife and partner in his adventures, wondered aloud why a murderer holding a gun on her was unburdening herself with a detailed confession. Although there were sev­eral writers, every script was distinctly flavored with the quirky sensibility shared by Barlow and Del Grande.

     In Seeing Things, the protagonist, Louie Ciccone, was a reporter for a Toronto newspaper, living with his parents in the back room of their bakery. He was a very unwilling clairvoyant. He had to find the murderers using his own intelligence and his estranged wife as driver, goad, confidante, and occasional rescuer to fill in the missing pieces. Louie's klutzy, workaholic persona and domestic worries were threaded with allusive wit and literate one-liners, manic energy, and considerable acting skills.

     Louie obsessed over finding the murderer glimpsed in his visions and on the possibility of getting back together with Marge. Often the two obsessions collided, so that his need to see murderers caught continually undercut his claim that Marge and his son, Jason, were more important to him than anything else. Nevertheless, eventually Marge and Louis did reunite in a gradual, psychologically credible narrative arc. His physical and social ineptitude was incurable, however, and an intrinsic and funny part of the character. He was also self-conscious, pushy, vain, indecisive, inventive, courageous, and compassionate, altogether a credible character rather than the formulaic hero of a typical police or mystery program.

     Heather Redfern, the crown attorney, assisted Louie in many episodes. Blonde, single, and upper class, she was clearly intended to be a contrast to the Ciccones, creating moments of both sexual and class conflict in a series that had no recurring antagonist. Marge's new job as a real estate agent also provided new narrative possibilities. The setting of Toronto provided a very specific sense of place, which also anchored the series . Another strength of the series was the fact that most of Canada's best character actors appeared as guests on the show.

     The  series,  like  so  many  Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) series in the 1980s, subverted the message of authority. It offered ambiguity in the outcome of several episodes and presented irony with a wryness and whimsicality that connected it to another favorite series more than a decade later: Due South. The last season of Seeing Things, however, began to strain the format with ever more improbable plots, including the landing of a flying saucer. Although the main American networks were not interested in Seeing Things, which at 43 episodes over six seasons did not meet the necessary number of 60 episodes (for syndication) and which was made before specialty channels provided  alternate outlets, the series did appear on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and was very suc­cessfully sold in Europe, South Africa, and Australia.