James Bond Meets Cary Grant meets...David McCallum as a Russian Spy????? (The Man from U.N.C.L.E)

Member Name: shroud

Product:	The Man from U.N.C.L.E
Date:	17/07/08 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great cold war spy romps, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in top form

Disadvantages: actual series can be hard to find on TV, series itself still awaiting DVd release

In 1964, the cold war was growing strong and Ian Fleming's Bond was king of the fictional espionage world. It is perhaps unsurprising that film makers Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer thought that the time was ripe for them to conquer TV, and that the best way to do that was to get Ian Fleming on board and have him create a show with a Bond like character. Originally conceived as Ian Fleming's Solo, the idea was to have an agent (named Solo), as the star of the show. He would work for a shadowy organisation whose sole purpose was to safeguard the free world and keep democracy and free enterprise safe. The agency was called United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, or UNCLE, and hence, Solo was The Man from Uncle.

As it turned out, audiences so liked the pairing of Robert Vaughn's Solo with his Russian counterpart, Illya Kuryakin, so much that he too became a regular fixture and so Solo and Kuryakin more or less became paired partners. Robert Vaughn's Solo was very much in the Bond mould, with a touch of Cary Grant a la North by Northwest. Indeed the format of the show follows the North by Northwest formula of having each episode feature a mundane situation with a normal citizen living his ordinary life, when he gets unwittingly caught up in the dark undercurrents of an espionage plot, complete with the wry sense of humour. David McCallum's Illya was no Russian Bond, nor a Cary Grant suave type figure however, but was a blonde mop topped 60's dude stuck in a suit who quite steals the show away from his co-star. Likewise, there was a secret organisation of bad guys they had to fight off with their wits, charm, and of course, gadgets. The super baddies were known as THRUSH (this WAS back in the day when to your average person, thrush was a bird and not a nasty infection, though given what the baddies wanted to do, it is perhaps still an apt moniker).

It ran for 105 episodes over 4 seasons, from 1964 to 1968. The first season was in black and white, and the later ones were in full colour. There were also a few "movies" but these are really two parter episodes that have been re-edited into TV movies, so they add nothing special, although for the re-edits, a bit of extra footage was shot. It is occasionally seen in reruns, and strangely enough, actually debuted on Swedish TV in 2002, so it is well and truly alive in syndication.The "films" are out on DVD, with the series itself forthcoming, so this is your best bet if you want to catch this vintage spy series.

Summary: Wryly witty TV series offering from Ian Fleming