4 replies to this topic

[DavidJones]

Been watching Season 1 of this. It's light and fluffy, but what does everyone else think of it?

[Odd Jobbies]

I loved it as a kid, Pierce Brosnan nailed the character and carried the show. The major tarnish on it is that it came between Brosnan and The Living Daylights.

[nickjb007]

Honestly it is a very entertaining show, the writing is a little bit iffy in some episodes but the acting between Brosnan and Zimbalist is great.  The show actually progresses pretty well into the seasons, my fiance and I are watching Season 4 right now and it has some of the best episodes of the series.  I've read that Season 5 falls off pretty badly. It was a great role for Brosnan and highly entertaining, I think it was a great pre-Bond role for him.  

[DavidJones]

I did think, though, that Brosnan was different in the pilot - strange, as the pilot was filmed afterwards. He seemed more cunning and suave and more like Bond and not goofy and uptight as he would become in Episode 2 onwards.

Edited by DavidJones, 02 January 2013 - 12:50 PM.

[David_M]

I enjoyed it tremendously in the earliest seasons, less so as it went on.  The first season, with Murphy and Ms. Wolfe/Fox was best, then it started to go off the rails a bit when Mildred Krebbs showed up.  The "marriage to get a Green Card" plot was the jump-the-shark moment, and when the rival love interest Jack Scalia showed up, I bailed.

 

What was great about the show, at first, was that it poked fun at the whole notion of "heroes", TV and otherwise.  Brosnan's character is immediately accepted as a great detective and man of action based entirely on how he looks (which is, in short, like James Bond).  Because he is handsome and dresses well and has an accent, everyone assumes he's the hero when in fact he's usually in way over his head.  Laura Holt is the real brains of the outfit, the actual trained detective, while "Steele" knows only what he's learned from watching old mystery movies, and is usually the last person in the room to figure out the answers.

 

And yet he's not a complete blithering idiot.  As an accomplished con man, he can do the "undercover" parts of PI work with ease.  Also, he can pick locks, defeat security systems and spot another liar right away.  So he has his uses, he's just not much of a detective.  Of course over time he learns to be one, which is fun to watch, but by the time his evolution is complete, the dynamic of the show has changed and much of the fun has gone out of it (and to further spoil the fun we drift further and further into "domestic bliss" territory).  Also it was a mistake to finally reveal his real name (which I have deliberately forgotten).  It took a lot away from what made the character interesting.

 

Yes, there are also the theme of sexual politics, "reversed gender roles" and the notion that women are seldom respected for their brains, while (lesser) men coast on their maleness.  But for me, the most daring angle of the show was the way it challenged not only Hollywood conventions but also our own prejudices.  There have always been actors stuck forever as "the heavy" or "the boss" or "the hero" based entirely on their physical appearance, and viewers who have refused to accept them as anything else (cough-DanielCraig-cough).  It was funny to see a guy thrown into the "hero" role simply because everyone who sees him automatically assumes that's what he must be.  Funny because in reality it's not at all who he is, at least at first.  His fascination with Laura, plus perhaps some deep desire to reform himself, makes him hang around until eventually he does become the hero everyone assumes him to be from Day One.  Again, it's a fun evolution to watch, but once it's done, the show has no reason to go on.

 

In interviews, Brosnan described Steele as "James Bond meets John Cleese" (ironic given what would happen later!) and IMHO his ability to create a character who was at once ingenious and clueless, polished and clumsy, heroic and dishonest, cool and ridiculous, remains his greatest achievement on camera.

 

The irony, for me, is that Brosnan got the Bond role for the same reason his character ends up as "Steele"...because everyone agrees he looks like 007.  I've lost count of how many times people have said he was "born to be Bond," or looks the most like we imagine Bond would look.  But for me, it was only ever skin deep.  He always looked right, but he never became Bond for me.  To this day, I still prefer him as Steele, the con man with the face of a hero, or as Andy Osnard, the slimy snake in hero's clothing in "Tailor of Panama."  Somehow I just like it better when there's another layer to things.  When he plays the straight hero, it leaves me flat.  There's no there, there.