The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Before there was Alias, before there was Men in Black, even before there was Mission: Impossible, there was The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68), one of the best Cold War action/adventure/spy shows on television. Each week, agents from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement agency would track down and subdue any person or organization that posed a threat to world peace. U.N.C.L.E. consisted of top minds from all over the world, thus being "multi-cultural" before anyone had even heard of the term.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. obviously owes much to the James Bond films. You've got your two main agents: the handsome devil who's always aware of any female within ten miles, Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and the quiet, reserved Russian Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum). You've got the nerdy chief Alexander Waverly (Leo G. Carroll). You've got power-hungry dictators, mad scientists and your garden variety bad guys. And don't forget the women: the tantalizing girls working for U.N.C.L.E. who constantly tease Solo (Or is it the other way around?), the evil but seductive enemy and the beautiful, innocent woman who just happens to get caught up in the mix.



Sounds pretty formula, but it works. And surprisingly, the episodes hold up quite well. (Robert Towne and Harlan Ellison were just two of the writers who worked on the show.) Many consider the first of the show's four seasons to be the best. The three episodes on Disc One of Season One (the only season in black and white) do what good TV is supposed to do. They're exciting, fast-paced, reasonably intelligent, well-scored (surprisingly well-scored for a TV show) and fun.

McCallum gets almost no screen time until the third episode, "The Quadripartite Affair," leaving Vaughn's Solo literally solo. (I think the original concept was for the show was to be about only one agent.)

You could legitimately say the show is an exercise in formula: U.N.C.L.E. is alerted to a threat that could possibly become global. Information is gathered. It's usually discovered that the only connection to the bad guy is some beautiful, unsuspecting woman - a distant relative, a former lover, etc. But the show is so much fun, who really cares about formula?

In later seasons the show would descend into camp and outright silliness, but on average, the first season of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. can stand toe-to-toe with any other show from that era.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is currently available as a complete series from Amazon for $169.99. That's $42.50 a season which seems very high for a show that's 40 years old. Wait for the price to drop or for the individual seasons to be rereleased. (It appears the individual seasons are inconveniently out of print, now that the complete series is out. Maybe Warner understands that Seasons 2-4 had so many turkeys, this is the only way to sell those seasons.)