RELIC HUNTER “Buddha’s Bowl” A Canadian-produced series. 20 September 1999 (Season 1, Episode 1. Tia Carrera (Sydney Fox), Christien Anholt (Nigel Bailey), Lindy Booth. Guest Cast: Tony Rosato.

   Any resemblance to the Indiana Jones movies is not only not incidental, but as far I can see, totally intentional. Sydney Fox is nominally a professor of archaeology and ancient history at Trinity College, but every week for three seasons on TV, she went off to yet another part of the world to track down a relic, if you will, of a large significance, importance, or (very often) of value. She’s also a master of martial arts, and if this first episode is any example, looks just fine in a simple black bra.

   Accompanying her on all these adventures is her teaching assistant, Nigel Bailey, a much more reserved young man from England whom both Sydney and we, the viewer meet for the first time in “Buddha’s Bowl.” On his very first day on the job he’s swept off to Nepal, where a map is said to point the way to the relic’s present location.

   Of course there is someone else looking for it as well, an old acquaintance and rival who knows Sydney well enough to call her “Sweet cheeks.” The scenery is great, the danger is real (stuck in a tomb filling with sand and no exit, for example), and Tia Carrera, in almost every scene, is a young woman whom every young male would most desperately like to trade places with Nigel to go on all 66 episodes with her.

   Even some of us older fellows.