GET SMART!!!!

(The late Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Secret Agent 86 for CONTROL, from the classic 1965-70 TV series Get Smart .)

One of the all-time best TV comedies ever devised was the 1965-70 series Get Smart , created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry . Starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, CONTROL agent 86, plus Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Edward C. Platt as "The Chief" , the show was a hilarious takeoff on the 60's James Bond Spy Craze . Every week, Max & 99 would foil some nutty scheme by the rival spy organization KAOS to conquer the world.




Nearly two years ago, Time Life put out the entire five season run on DVD, which you can order from here . (Visitors to this blog may remember another classic 60s spy series available on DVD from Time Life.) Below is a scene from a 1965 episode:



I'm focusing on Get Smart due to the upcoming new movie version which opens June 20 in theatres. Here's a trailer for the new film. I'll reserve comment on the new film until when (more likely if ) I see it. -Ed


(Don Adams and Barbara Feldon as Max & 99 with their classic shoe phones, although I don't remember 99 having one in the series....)

Update: Here's an online site devoted to the original show, complete with episode guide and interviews!

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on DVD: UPDATED

Last month I broke down and purchased the forty-plus DVD set of the Complete Man From U.N.C.L.E. four season (105 episode)collection, and so far it's been a purchase about which I haven't had any regrets. Well almost; the packaging of the DVDs on flimsy glued together cardboard slats with one disc on top of the other isn't designed for longevity. ( I have to be very careful taking the discs out and then putting them back in.) That complaint aside, I've just finished watching the last two episodes of the show's first (1964-65) season (the one filmed in black & white) with guest stars Sharon Tate (whom U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn reminisced fondly about in an interview on one of the DVD extras included in the set) & Martin Balsam respectively and I've enjoyed them all, some more than others.


(Left to right: David McCallum as Russian UNCLE agent Illya Kuryakin, Leo G. Carroll as UNCLE chief Mr. Waverly and Robert Vaughn as American UNCLE agent Napoleon Solo.)

Yes, when you've watched these shows back to back on a nightly (or even a weekly) basis, it's not hard to pick out the same sets -the show was shot at the old MGM studio in Hollywood from 1964-68- regardless of how they've been "dressed up". (One week Solo & Illya will walk down "Main Street" in what's supposed to be New York City. The following episode the same street set, now with vaguely Easten European-language signs all over the place, will have been relocated to a fictional Communist Bloc country "somewhere behind the Iron Curtain" as U.N.C.L.E. chief Mr. Waverly would put it. And yes, the hound dog attitude Vaughn's Solo character projects around the female U.N.C.L.E. agents (and this being the mid-60s, the women agents in these episodes act more like secretaries than intelligence operatives, religated to making coffee & looking up research while the men do all the dangerous stuff) would've been grounds for a sexual harassment suit today.

In a nutshell, the show is representative of the period it was created in. The idea of a multi-national law enforcement agency, where various countries including the US & Russia (strangely, I have yet to see a Chinese U.N.C.L.E. representative), could put aside their differences and work together to protect those less fortunate may be native today, but it is still charming (and, in these post 9/11 days, not so far fetched anymore)in that post-JFK afterglow of the early 60s. To try and read anything more into it would be a mistake.

The set can be ordered by Time Life here . And an online episode guide can be found here.

-Ed