Throughout four seasons of The
Man From U.N.C.L.E., Robert Vaughn
and David McCallum played international crime-fighters facing off against the
world-domination-craving agents of THRUSH. And when they weren't jetting off to
exotic locales—represented by the best stock footage the show could
scrounge—the good guys gathered in sterile gray rooms to hatch their
plans alongside wall-sized computers. To get to HQ, U.N.C.L.E. agents slipped
through a secret entrance in the back of a tailor shop, and to the TV audiences
of the mid-'60s, there was something comforting about the notion that a dusty
basement in New York City housed the squeaky-clean offices of our covert protectors.
It gave the impression that people were working on our behalf, no matter how
shabby everything appeared on the surface.
Time-Life's deluxe edition of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series comes packed in a handsome attaché case, and is a
must for fans, who'll enjoy every poison-tipped dart and double-dealing foreign
dignitary. But casual TV buffs may want to wait a year, when the set is reportedly
going to be broken up into individual seasons. The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s first season is a TV landmark, offering spry,
sophisticated spy stories shot in crisp black-and-white. When the show switched
to color in season two, the producers began to make the villains more cartoony,
and that move toward the ridiculous continued up to the abbreviated season
four, when U.N.C.L.E. made a
belated stab at restoring some sobriety.
Still, even at its silliest, The
Man From U.N.C.L.E. contrasted well
with The Wild, Wild West and Mission:
Impossible, the other major James
Bond-inspired adventure series on the air around the same time. Although those
other shows fetishized nonexistent technology in their own way, The Man From
U.N.C.L.E. integrated its fountain-pen
communicators, pencil-thin air rifles, and triangular badges so fully into the
show that they became as important as the plots. And U.N.C.L.E.'s biggest gimmick was McCallum's character: a Russian
fighting alongside the good guys. McCallum's presence sent a message to
Americans that bitter Cold War enemies could come together to fight the
death-ray-wielding super-crooks that were the world's real threat.
Key features: Copious featurettes about the history and production
of the show—including a cool piece on the physics of the
gadgetry—as well as a slew of promotional materials.