The Best Television Shows: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The 1960s certainly were wild days. After the first two James Bond films took off, a lot of competitors started to come into the game, trying to do the same thing. Not many succeeded. On television The Man from U.N.C.L.E. began with some input from James Bond writer Ian Fleming himself. Television producer Norman Felton approached Fleming to talk about the possibility of doing a spy show on television. Fleming’s input did not amount to much though, due to the fact that he was in poor health and really did not have much time. He did donate the names Napoleon Solo (even though he did ‘borrow’ this name back for one of the thugs in GOLDFINGER: if you’ll look closely, the man who gets shot in the car by OddJob and then squished when the car gets pulverised, that was Mr Solo) and April Dancer. But nothing storywise came out of him so Felton asked writer Sam Rolfe to work out some ideas.

Rolfe came up with the acronym U.N.C.L.E. which was meant to stand for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, as a CIA-like agency of secret agents that would work worldwide for freedom, peace and democracy. Napoleon Solo was the top US Agent, whose adventures ranged from the mundane to the incredible. Definitely a man of action, Solo also had an eye for the ladies, while his Russian colleague and friend Ilya Kuryakin was a more sober type. Mr. Waverly was their very British superior, who sent them out on their various missions.

The first season was filmed in black and white and for the first 7 episodes, our agents introduced themselves to the audience, even going as far as breaking the fourth wall. From the second season on the series switched to glorious colour. The stories of the first season tended to follow a serious tone even though the show did not take itself too seriously. The stories were exciting and glamorous and always involved one normal person as an anchor for the audience to think:“I could be that person and have these wonderful adventures”. Although the second season allowed for some more humor, it was not until the third season that the campiness got a bit out of hand.

Sam Rolfe produced the first season but left the show after that. David Victor took over the reigns but once he read that the show was meant to be a spoof, that is what the show became over the remaining years. Several other producers took over until in the fourth season an attempt was made to bring the show back to its serious roots. However ratings were already down considerably and in mid-fourth season, the show was cancelled. Yet, for the time that it ran, the show featured an impressive bunch of guest stars, among which Cesar Romero, Ricardo Montalban, George Sanders, Rip Torn, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy (Shatner met Nimoy in the first season episode The Strigas Affair), Vincent Price, Kurt Russell, Sharon Tate, Angela Lansbury and many many more.

The show’s signature theme was composed by the late, great JERRY GOLDSMITH, who also scored a few episodes during the first season. Fellow composers were Morton Stevens, Lalo Schifrin, Walter Scharf, Gerald Fried, Robert Drasnin and Richard Shores, whose music was well presented on soundtrack releases of a few years ago.

During the original run of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. certain episodes were doubled up and released theatrically. The thinking behind this was that in the years that people were watching the show originally, 70% of America was still watching on black and white televisions. The films were advertised to be IN FULL COLOR and featured additional footage of action and violence or sex, to spice things up. In some countries these films managed to compete very well with the James Bond films. In 1983 the agents made one return appearance on television in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. The Fifteen Years Later Affair, in which an attempt was made to have another series started up but ratings were not impressive enough, it seems, despite the cameo appearance of a colleague secrent agent with the initials JB (played by one time JB actor George Lazenby) driving around in his custom Aston Martin DBV.

Even though seriousness went out the window after some time, watching these shows now, 40 years later, I find The Man From U.N.C.L.E. very interesting. The stories were interesting to watch, they were exciting, did not take themselves too seriously and always had interesting guest stars (even Sonny and Cher made an appearance in the third season). I never watched the show in the original years because I was too young, being born in 1966, but all things considered, this show deserves to be mentioned in this category.


So what do you think? If someone were to go thru the troubles of rebooting the show into a modern version, would this make the cut now? I look forward to your replies. Channel D closing now.