I Spy Now On DVD
From an Amazon review:
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.























