Customer Reviews

I Spy - Season 1

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"I Spy" the television series was a secret agent adventure that aired from 1965 to 1968. It teamed Robert Culp as international tennis player Kelly Robinson, and Bill Cosby as his trainer Alexander Scott. In reality, both were agents for the Pentagon and, while incognito as `tennis bums', they busied themselves tracking villains and spies.

The series broke new ground as the first American television drama to feature an African-American actor (Cosby) in a lead role. Cosby's Scotty played a straight-laced Rhodes scholar fluent in several languages, although he was really the brains behind the duo. Culp was the athlete and playboy who lived by the seat-of-his-pants.

I remember the show particularly for its exotic international locations a la James Bond, which was another first in American television. The joking banter and chemistry between Culp and Cosby was another highlight of the series, often in counterpoint to some serious subjects.

Season One included these 28 episodes:

1. So Long Patrick Henry -- Elroy Brown (Ivan Dixon) is an embittered American athlete who defects to China. Kelly and Scotty are assigned to bring him back, only to uncover a Red Chinese plot to expand their influence in Africa through Brown. (The first of seven consecutive episodes filmed in Hong Kong).

2. A Cup of Kindness -- Kelly must kill an old friend who is accused of being a double agent, and who has stolen some important scientific equipment. However, the man pleads innocent and asks Kelly to help him prove it.

3. Carry Me Back to Old Tsing-Tao -- Kelly and Scotty tangle with the greedy sons-in-law of an elderly Chinese merchant who claims he wants to pay a million dollars in back taxes so that he can go home to Formosa.

4. Chrysanthemum -- Naval Intelligence recruits Kelly and Scotty to retrieve stolen defence plans, with the help of a bumbling Frenchman.

5. Dragon's Teeth -- Kelly meets an old friend's fiancé in Hong Kong, only to watch the man suddenly drop dead -- the victim of a secret society called the Blue Dragon.

6. The Loser -- Kelly and Scotty intercept a heroin shipment, but the drug dealers want their product back, and kidnap Scotty for an exchange.

7. Danny Was A Million Laughs -- Kelly and Scotty are assigned to protect an obnoxious American gangster (Martin Landau) about to be extradited to the United States, and who is marked for death by his underworld associates.

8. A Time of the Knife -- Kelly is framed for murder as he tries to figure out what happened to a friend who was killed for information on a remote missile guidance system. (The first of six consecutive episodes filmed in Japan).

9. No Exchange on Damaged Merchandise -- Kelly and Scotty find their search for an enemy agent, to be used in an exchange for a captured American pilot, complicated by the pilot's wife.

10. Tatia -- Kelly falls in love with a beautiful photographer (Tatia Loring),
whom Scott believes is involved in the murders of four agents.

11. Weight of the World -- Kelly and Scotty must acquire a sample of a deadly new plague being developed by the Red Chinese and discover plans to test it in Japan.

12. Three Hours on a Sunday -- Kelly has three hours to acquire 50,000 dollars, the price he must pay a master criminal (Sheldon Leonard) for a roll of microfilm -- and Scotty's life.

13. Tigers in Heaven -- Kelly and Scotty are ordered to destroy the Tigers of Heaven, a neo-fascist group that has targeted the head of an old and distinguished Japanese family.

14. Affair in T'sien Cha -- The investigation into the disappearance of a train and its secret cargo lead Kelly and Scotty to an ancient walled city and a pretty American schoolteacher (Vera Miles). (Back in Hong Kong).

15. The Tiger -- Kelly Robinson must spring a trap set by the Vietcong for a guerrilla leader named The Tiger, using the latter's daughter, an American agent, as bait. (Filmed in Vietnam -- one of the very first, if not the first, TV series shot there).

16. The Barter -- On assignment to help a Soviet philosopher defect to the U.S., Scotty impersonates a foreign ambassador while Kelly tries to rescue a kidnapped girl. (Back in Japan for next three episodes).

17. Always Say Good Bye -- Kelly and Scotty must keep a womanising diplomat out of trouble while he's in Japan for official negotiations.

18. Court of the Lion -- On the trail of stolen diamonds and radioactive isotopes, Kelly and Scotty find a Japanese village terrorized by gangsters led by a man who calls himself a Zulu king.

19. Turkish Delight -- Scotty poses as an agronomist to locate three other scientists kidnapped by a Turkish spy (Victor Buono) who intends to sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. (Bet you thought Turkey; nada, Mexico for the next ten episodes, amigos).

20. Bet Me a Dollar -- After Kelly bets Scotty that he can disappear for a week without being found, Scotty learns that his partner has been infected with the anthrax virus and will die in 24 hours.

21. Return to Glory -- Kelly and Scotty must make contact with the reclusive exiled leader of a Latin American country who may be planning a revolution that would return him to power.

22. The Conquest of Maude Murdock -- Kelly and Scotty are ordered to "kidnap" a high-ranking U.S. official (Jeanette Nolan) who is visiting Mexico in order to test her security arrangements, only to discover that they're being used by a traitor who plans to kill the official.

23. A Day Called 4 Jaguar -- Kelly and Scotty set out to find a blue-eyed giant who rescued Kelly's girlfriend from a car wreck, only to discover that he's a missing Soviet colonel. Stars Rory Calhoun and George Montgomery.

24. Crusade to Limbo -- Kelly poses as a critic of his own country's foreign policy in order to infiltrate a revolutionary group in Mexico.

25. My Mother, The Spy -- Kelly and Scotty are sent to Mexico to recover a runaway American spy (Sally Kellerman), only to discover that she has given birth and refuses to go back. Also stars Alejandro Rey and Theo Marcuse -- major character actors in the 60s.

26. There was a Little Girl -- Kelly and Scotty must babysit the vacationing daughter of an American VIP -- an assignment complicated by a pre-Colombian mask containing a deadly secret.

27. It's All Done with Mirrors -- A Soviet scientist (Carroll O'Connor aka Archie Bunker) kidnaps Kelly and brainwashes him into believing that Scotty is a traitor and must be killed

28. One Thousand Fine -- Kelly helps a friend find a cache of gold, a mission complicated by the presence of the friend's fiancé -- Kelly's old girlfriend.

Great show. Highly recommended.

I don't intend to focus on the series, which is excellent, in this review. What I want to center on is the lousy packaging of the Newly Remastered version of I Spy by Image Entertainment. The previous release of I Spy, in 2002-03, had each season boxed in seven separate cases. The new release uses those multi-disc cases and the ones selected by Image are as cheap as they come. Not only did pieces of the cases break apart during shipping, leaving the DVDs to rattle around loosely, damaging them. But the interior flip holder broke away as well. I bought seasons 1, 2, and 3 from Amazon, and they were all like this. It isn't Amazon's fault. They could have shipped the order twenty times and Image's shoddy packaging would have yielded the same result everytime.

I have been a long time customer of Image Entertainment, going back to laserdisc days. But I shall never buy another product from them again and risk its mailing to me in such cheap, unacceptable cases. They saved a penny and lost a customer. Real stupid in these economic times to treat your customers like gum on your shoe, instead of gold. When I attempted to contact Image, their email for customer inquiries was dead. I telephoned them and they didn't want to hear about the problem. They REFUSED to take my name and telephone number.

The 82 hour-long episodes (all in color) of the spy adventure series "I Spy" ran from 1965-1968 on NBC.
All 28 episodes from season one are on this DVD, there was no pilot episode.

It was a top-notch spy saga with a fair amount of the same "tongue-in-cheek" self-parody found in "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." series and the popular James Bond movie franchise. But don't expect the same level of gadgetry and gimmicks; "I Spy" is much more about the witty banter between its pair of spies, Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp) and Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby). Their cover as they travel the world on assorted missions is tennis, Kelly is a tennis pro and Scotty is his trainer. They work for an unnamed U.S. espionage agency.

The intelligent and witty tone of the show obviously appealed to its fans as reflected by its three year broadcast run and subsequent syndication. Much of the credit for this goes to Sheldon Leonard who incorporated the more subtle comedy elements he had experimented with when producing "Make Room for Daddy", "The Andy Griffith Show", and "The Dick Van Dyke Show".

Cosby was hardly an unknown at the time of the series premiere. He was a wildly popular stand-up comic who had appeared many times on television variety shows and sold millions of record albums featuring his semi-autobiographical comedy routines. But his Alexander Scott character is generally a pretty serious guy (he does occasionally sneak in some of his comedy routines) and Cosby's portrayal is quite believable. Prior to this no comedian (and certainly no black comedian) had stared in an action show.

Culp is not so much the dashing James Bond style hero as a contemporary version of the less macho Bret Maverick type. He is not above pleading ignorance or confusion in a crisis. Fortunately the chemistry was excellent between the two stars.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

It's finally here! I Spy in Season Sets! All the seasons being released the same day and at the same low price ($19.98)! The show that put Bill Cosby on the map. He appeared on the Jack Paar show and a very young Rob Reiner saw that appearance and performed it, verbatim, to his dad Carl Reiner (The Dick Van Dyke Show co-creator). Carl was so impressed he invited Cosby to the Van Dyke set where he performed and blew everyone away, including Sheldon Leonard, I Spy creator. The rest is history and now ALL of that history is available! Great day, great day! Make sure you get your copy!

It's great to watch this show again after so many years. Many of the other shows from the era slid into silliness, but I Spy was a class act. These transfers are not too bad. They are a bit dirty, particularly the (excellent) opening graphics. So, essentially, this isn't quite on par with the transfer of The Invaders for instance. Shadow areas are also a bit crushed. Overall the presentation is nice and is quite pleasant upconverted. The price is what hooked me into buying the first season. No regrets, but I would have paid extra for a real remaster.

Weird title for a review but helpful for all europeans (like me). The disks are region-free and play just fine on every dvd player.

As for the show itself, it's fantastic. I tried it just because of the price and the 2 leading actors and i wasn't dissapointed. I had watched the 1st season of "The man from U.N.C.L.E" before the that and i pretty much hated it. Thankfully "I,spy" is a vastly superior show with real and subtle humor (not the silliness of "the man..."), good stories (if a bit dated but that's to be expected) , great acting and fantstic production values.

Bill Cosby is great and very serious in his role while Robert Cult impresses not only with his solid acting but with the way he moves around the scenery. The guy seems like he is a gymnastics' athlete in some action scenes.

The picture quality is a mixed bag. On the one hand the restoration is good and the picture is quite sharp and vivid and looks great on a good upscaler. On the other hand there are many dirty spots which might bother some people (not me).

For this price this set is a real bargain with many hours of entertainment. I definately plan on buying the remaining 2 seasons.

This review covers all three seasons of "I Spy." Having never seen the complete first season during the 1960s, I was quite impressed with the quality of the scripts, Bill Cosby's acting-this was his first serious acting work after his brilliant start in stand-up comedy-and the overall sense of fun which this series possessed. Culp and Cosby played brilliantly off of each others' styles. Anyone who remembers the show would appreciate having this series in their collection. Anyone too young to remember the series should give it a try; great guest stars, solid storylines and the prototype for many series to follow are all here.

My brothers and I watched I Spy when it first aired and in syndication, and I've just started watching the first season on DVD. I love the location shoots, with now-familiar character actors like Mako, James Hong and Beulah Quo, and the writing holds up reasonably well, too.

I had recalled Kelly and Scotty as equals, but in the first several episodes, Robinson certainly seems to be the lead agent. They are friends, however, and both use the word "wonderfulness," the title of one of Cosby's comedy albums, a lot while bantering back and forth. I think Kelly uses it more than Scotty. The early episodes seem to feature more of Kelly's cover identity as a tennis pro than I recalled.

The first three of Robert Culp's audio commentaries bears little relationship to the background video of So Long Patrick Henry, The Loser and Court of the Lion but Culp authored those episodes and is effusively proud of them. He initially sounds hesitant, almost apologetic, in his telling of his background and the creation of the show, but warms to the subject. During his Court of the Lion commentary Culp describes meeting guest star and future wife France Nuyen.

Ideally Culp and Cosby would have been commenting together, laughing and joking as they did on the show, but at least we have them both in every episode.

If you'd like to see and hear what was going on in the 1960s, then this is for you. The music, fashions, dialogue, and social comment are a "HERE'S HOW IT WAS" discourse set in a most wonderfully entertaining format. The locales, as well as the photography, are terrific. The asides are classic. Earl Hagen, the dean of film scoring at that time, shows why he was the dean of film scoring at that time in each episode. As we used to say in the '60s, "DIG THIS."
TONY HOROWITZ

I was an early adopter of the original DVD releases. I'll get to their picture quality in a moment, but I've been a long time fan, thanks to a longer time fan some 5 years my junior (I'm 35), and double the proof that one doesn't need to be a Baby Boomer to appreciate quality stories! They're timeless and have an integrity sorely lacking in today's shows... but I digress...).

As for the existing DVD releases: The color levels were terrific, but the amount of scratches and dust marks on the film was... let's face it, they were bloody awful. The audio was reasonably well cleaned up too. For the prices at the time, they were VERY competitive for the amount of episodes on each volume. Indeed, 2 weeks ago I was re-watching "Court of the Lion" and wondering if the original DVD sales would amount to future interest... obviously, they were. I'm happy. :D But I digress; those who missed out on the original sales will be delighted at the new pricing - that redefines "VERY competitive" for the per-episode cost!

Now if these "remastered" releases take care of the scratches and flecks alone, while maintaining the terrific color restoration as seen on the original DVD releases, I'll really really really be happy. (And no doubt would look spectacular on blu-ray too and would be the incentive for me to convert to that format, hint hint hint... Not even James Bond has that power... but probably would once I get to see those titles out on blu-ray...)

Granted, I don't often double-dip, and I know naught any extras or, indeed, the quality of the restoration, but you can bet your sweet bippy I'll be pre-ordering and keeping my eye out for season 3's (hopefully imminent) release.

But why not season 3 at the same time as the previous two? Home to Judgment, Tag You're It, Suitable for Framing, Apollo, Anyplace I Hang Myself is Home, Carmelita is One of Us, A Few Miles West of Nowhere, and The Name of the Game (amongst others) are instant classics that transcend the quality of the peers this show competed against. Even "A Few Miles West of Nowhere" and "The Name of the Game", despite having a fair share of clichéd moments, still have a gravitas that works so much in their favor... unlike today, their plots weren't so worn out anyway... Again, I digress. I really hope this season is re-released as well.