10 replies to this topic

[TheREAL008]

I love the old Bondian feel this show gives off. I watched the first couple of episodes on hulu and I;m getting hooked.

For those who have seen the show, how good is it overall?

[Brian Flagg]

You know that this thread stands little chance of succeeding because it's not about a remake, don't you?

Timely thread, as I've just begun this journey myself. I've had the Film Score Monthly soundtrack CD for years now, but have only recently started to explore the show. It's interesting how I SPY was groundbreaking for featuring Bill Cosby as an equal lead (oh America, why are you slow to grow up?) but it was never shown in syndication in my neck of the woods, so I only knew it by reputation.

The program is filmed on location around the world which makes for some great 1960s/Spy Craze-era scenery, but the downside is that too many episodes in a row feature the same locale. That's inevitable, but you may want to skip around and watch different episodes not filmed in, say, Greece all at once.

The interior sets are cheap, as were many setbound TV shows of the time. Sometimes it looks like the walls are gonna fall down! Charming, though.

Culp and Cosby have great chemistry together and you'll either smile wide at their comic antics or groan in disgust, because sometimes they can get "cute" and for me it distracted from the mission at hand. Sometimes they went overboard with the repartee.

Earle Hagen's music is great! He, and Hugo Friedhofer combined to compose scores for every episode. This was special because back then shows were allowed a certain amount of stock music.

I'll watch some more episodes on HULU so as to continue the discussion.

[Bryce (003)]

I Spy is one of my favs. I own all of it on DVD.

The location work was ahead of it's time. Sheldon Leonard tells the story of of being approached by a 22 year old "kid" who had just graduated from UCLA named Foaud Said met with and made a pitch.

His pitch was that for $25,000, he could build and rig a large flat paneled truck that could carry lights, generators, a flatbed editing table, sound equipment, cameras. The film could be processed by CBS news departments wherever they went. The truck could simply be loaded up on a C-130 and flown anywhere. Then all you needed was cast, locations and extra's. Fuel, film and audio tape could be obtained anywhere.

Leonard said OK and the "kid" delivered. This became "Cine-Mobile". Leonard commented that the "kid" was doing well adding that he had spent a month the previous summer as a guest on his 250 foot yacht cruising the Med.

The location work and the Culp/Cos combo was a geat balance. For the 60's a TV show (let alone any films - short of Bond) they went the distance. When every other spy show was filming on back lot here in LA, every week, you were shown Hong Kong, Tokyo, Okinawa, Mexico City, Acapulco, Las Vegas, Nice, Madrid, Paris, Florence, Rome, Morocco, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Athens and Greece...and most importantly, saw these guys actually there, walking the streets, running across rooftops, or sitting in lavish estates or gardens or driving through the Italian countryside. Epic to say the least.

But Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott were THE hip dudes. No heavy gadgets but a few, guns, guts, fists and wits and a natural banter.

Love this show. Love it.

[dodge]

A timely thread indeed. I'd just received the entire first season DVD set...and after watching a single episode, I went ahead and ordered season two. Forget the movie, indeed, chaps. This show was ahead of its time, and still rocks.

I'd been expecting camp. What I found was a perfect blend of real comedy and drama. In the first two episodes, the comedy is largely held until the very end, almost as a sort of coda. The storytelling still seems exceptionally strong and fresh for TV...and the chemistry between Culp and Cos is phenomenal!

In his commentary, Culp makes an interesting point. They were searching for a black actor who could handle the comedy. The producer, Sheldon Leonard, was having a devil of a time. But Culp spotted Cos on the Johnny Carson show and was impressed by...his anger. The comic gift was there, of course, but the anger was the deciding factor. And Culp, if he's got it right, gets full credit for insisting Cosby's character be a full partner--50-50, not 70-30 or even 60-40.

Within just two shows, the chemistry's really growing. Again, per Culp, the show died because back then many people weren't ready to accept a hip, brainy, sexy young black in their living rooms week after week. But I'm already grateful the show lasted for three seasons. And I'm looking forward to watching one episode a week, to prolong the viewing pleasure.

Incidentally, in the second episode, Culp does a way-ahead-of-its-time Jackie Chan-style fight against a couple of villains.

Check it out, even the first season only. It'll be a few bucks well spent.

[Binyamin]

The first five episodes from the first season are officially available online at YouTube, free and legal:

http://www.youtube.c...Fg&feature=fvsp

Edited by Binyamin, 31 October 2009 - 05:41 PM.

[dodge]

The first five episodes from the first season are officially available online at YouTube, free and legal:

http://www.youtube.c...Fg&feature=fvsp

Thanks for the tip, with hopes that some here will be moved to give the first five a try. I've just watched the first 3 episodes on my Season 1 DVD--and was thrilled to see the quick development of a the relationship between Culp and Cosby. The first two episodes are the more dramatic, so the banter is understated. By the third, these two are in full swing--and my affection for Derek Flint has been completely replaced.

[Jackanaples]

Amazon has the I SPY season set priced at a incredibly reasonable $12.99. At that price, they're worth it for the Robert Culp commentaries alone.

It was a really great series and is very watchable just for the interplay between the two leads. I find I also enjoy because of the realism though.

The Culp written episodes are easily some of the best of the series. A particular favorite is one from Season 3: "Home to Judgment". I won't spoil the plot but it's atypical for the show and co-stars Will Geer from "The Waltons". A tight thriller of an episode as I recall.

Whenever I listen to the commentary and I hear how Bob Culp tried to get Sam Peckinpah a directing gig on the show it makes me really frustrated. That would have been brilliant.

[Jackanaples]

I SPY fans! Have you seen this THREE HOUR INTERVIEW with Robert Culp?

Fantastic and informative. I love that guy.

[dodge]

Amazon has the I SPY season set priced at a incredibly reasonable $12.99. At that price, they're worth it for the Robert Culp commentaries alone.

It was a really great series and is very watchable just for the interplay between the two leads. I find I also enjoy because of the realism though.

The Culp written episodes are easily some of the best of the series. A particular favorite is one from Season 3: "Home to Judgment". I won't spoil the plot but it's atypical for the show and co-stars Will Geer from "The Waltons". A tight thriller of an episode as I recall.

Whenever I listen to the commentary and I hear how Bob Culp tried to get Sam Peckinpah a directing gig on the show it makes me really frustrated. That would have been brilliant.

In Culp's commentary, disc one, Season One, he mentions that he worked for Sam for some years. Can't remember the title, but the two of them came up with a project that sounded terrific--ahead of its time, according to Culp--which the studio head, in a rage, threw out the window!

[Brian Flagg]

Culp & Cosby: A special bond

Bill Cosby says the death of onetime costar Robert Culp on Wednesday makes him feel as if he's lost a protective older brother.

By Greg Braxton

March 26, 2010

Robert Culp and Bill Cosby knew they were taking a risk in the mid-1960s when the actors teamed up as globe-trotting spies in "I Spy." The NBC series was the first drama in American television to feature an African American actor in a lead role.

But making history ultimately was secondary to their impact on each other, according to Cosby, who spoke warmly about his former costar who died unexpectedly this week after taking a fall near his Hollywood Hills home. The men developed a personal bond that extended far beyond their on-screen partnership, and their two-member secret society puzzled, even exasperated, their wives.

"Even to this day, [Cosby's wife] Camille would just walk away when Bob and I got together," Cosby recalled with a laugh during an interview Wednesday. "We almost had our own language and our own way of connecting, sometimes without saying anything."

"To our wives," continued Cosby, "it was some kind of code. Sometimes we would start to laugh, seemingly at nothing. Our wives hated the two of us together. It must have been horrible for them. They became friends and just looked at the two of us like we were nuts."

They worked together from 1965 to 1968 in the groundbreaking, lighthearted drama in which Culp played Kelly Robinson, a government agent posing as a top tennis player traveling the world, while Cosby portrayed spy Alexander Scott, Robinson's trainer and traveling companion.

"The first-born in every family is always dreaming for an imaginary older brother or sister who will look out for them," Cosby said. "Bob was the answer to my dreams."

In a 1994 interview, Culp addressed the significance of the show: "No other black man and no other white man would have made it work. We just got lucky. We met and decided that we liked each other. Everything else for me and Bill took second position to that. Both of us had total trust in each other."

When the series launched, Culp had a full résumé of film and TV roles, but Cosby was still an unproven dramatic actor -- even though he could point to a booming stand-up career and wildly popular comedy albums. Despite Cosby's mainstream success, some affiliates, angered by the black actor's prominence, refused to air the show.

The two overcame other potential land mines as well. During the three-year run of "I Spy" they competed head-to-head three years in a row for an Emmy in the lead dramatic actor category. Cosby won the award each time.

"Bob was the actor and I was the entertainer," Cosby recalled. "The day after each of those awards, I went to work with a feeling of guilt and darn near embarrassment. As soon as Bob appeared at work, he would come and say, 'How you feeling?' I said, 'OK.' The next thing I knew, I had forgotten all about the Emmy."

They gave each other nicknames. Culp was "Hoby," a character he played on "Zane Grey Theater." Cosby was "Dobbsie," after the Humphrey Bogart character in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" -- a movie both men loved. "Whenever one of us would make a mistake, we would start to dance like the old man in the movie who finds gold," Cosby said.

One of the funniest on-set moments came during a long scene in which the two agents were interrogating a suspect. Cosby muffed his lines a couple of times, and the shooting had to start over. The tension was building -- no one wanted to do the scene over, remembered Cosby.

"Finally we get to the last page, where Bob's last line is, 'Where did Manny take the stolen body?' and we're there, and Bob gets this look and says, 'Where did Manny sober?' and he just stood there with this look like he had said the line right. And I just went. . . . Everybody lost it. We could not stop laughing."

After "I Spy" ended in 1968, the two worked together again in 1972's hard-edged detective thriller, "Hickey & Boggs," and later in 1994's "I Spy" TV movie. Though they lived on different coasts, they remained close.

"I attribute our friendship to Bob and his honesty," Cosby said. "More than anyone else I've ever worked with, he was the first person to sense or smell what I was about, from ground zero. No matter how many mistakes I made, he never stopped teaching and protecting me. He was the big brother that all of us always wished for."

http://www.latimes.c...0,7875964.story

[dodge]

I seem to remember reading something a while back about a breach in the relationship between Cos and Culp. I understand how, now, Cos will remember everything fondly and in the best light. But if my memory's right, Culp had indicated that he'd been after a reunion movie for some time but Cos--who'd gone on to great success--had resisted. Anyone know anything about this?