Tim Elliot is an agent with MI-5.
If this is the first time you are hearing of Elliot, learning that he is an agent with MI-5 will not come as a surprise. If, however, you are already familiar with him, like his ex-wife, Judith, or his 10-year-old (going on 30) son, Marcus, or even his best (and likely only) friend, Chris, well, news of his being an operative would be a shock. One that would never be believed.
When we first meet Elliot, he is a fairly unhappy late 30-something clerk or sales assistant (depending on who you talk with) in a computer store, a job he really has no liking for. He has one friend who works with him, the Chris mentioned above, who is the kind of friend that sometimes you are better off without. He is divorced from Judith who has remarried and who has nothing good to say about her ex. He has one child, that son Marcus, who wants very much to live with his mother because he has absolutely no respect for his totally undriven father. The only thing he seems at all good at is puzzles and that does not win him anything, certainly not the pride of his family.
In that first meeting we follow Elliot when he decides he needs to improve himself to regain his son's affection and that will start with a new job so he quits his clerk position and heads to the Job Centre to find something new. That new job is a data processing one in Westminster. Nothing fancy, of course, but it seems better than a clerking position in a computer shop.
Unfortunately, Westminster seems to be a very large place with lots of rooms and lots of people too busy to give directions and maybe the directions are not quite as accurate as they need to be because the Job Centre man was, um, interesting. Whatever the cause, he arrives at the wrong room at the right time and is given an application test and because it is mostly puzzles, he does quite good at it. Exceptionally well, as a matter of fact.
Suddenly Elliot is given an interview, congratulated on his superb test results, lauded for his terrific ability to act as if he doesn't really know he is being offered a position with MI-5 as an agent, and handed his own firearm. Naturally, he is told that his job as a secret agent demands he keep it all very much a secret from everyone.
Sound preposterous? Absolutely. It is also a great deal of fun to watch and stays fun as he tries to balance being an agent, which he is not sure he wants to be, and being a parent, which no one thinks he is capable of being, and dealing with two new women in his life, one of whom is throwing herself at him to his less than thrilled response and the other is thinking maybe she should as well. And then there is his boss, who calls himself the Examiner, who has a good number of quirks himself, not the least of which is throwing shurikens at all sorts of things for no apparent reason.