The death of David McCallum a few days ago prompted a return to the show that made his name in the 1960s. Well, not the show itself, but a 1983 TV movie “return”, which looks as if it was intended to relight the fire under the series itself.
It was not to be and so this remains the final hurrah for McCallum and co-star Robert Vaughn as Ilya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo, the spy-fi buddies working for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
The show had been part-devised by Ian Fleming as a response to the surge of interest in all things spy after the success of James Bond and ran from 1964 to 1968. Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo was meant to be its undisputed star, Solo being a singular (and it’s also Man from Uncle, not Men), with McCallum’s Ilya Kuryakin firmly in “sidekick” position. But McCallum caught the viewers’ eye and his role was beefed up.
The bright, blithe, quippy and only semi-serious tone of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was semi-borrowed from the British TV show The Avengers. Homage is paid to both to 007 and The Avengers through on-screen appearances from Patrick Macnee, star of The Avengers, and onetime (in every sense of the word) 007 George Lazenby, who arrives in a silver Aston Martin with the number plate JB, just in case there was any doubt about who he is meant to be.
As to plot, it’s the dastardly Thrush organisation at it again, stealing a nuclear weapon which they threaten to detonate somewhere in America. As part of the ransom, its bonkers leader, Justin Sepheran (Anthony Zerbe), insists on the involvement of Solo and Kuryakin, which involves pulling both men out of retirement. Solo is now something in computers, while Kuryakin has somewhat improbably become a high-end fashion designer.
After some re-orientation scenes reminding us that the guys are now in their early 50s – McCallum wearing his years more lightly than Vaughn – the plot sends them into the usual Man from Uncle scenarios: biffing bad guys, catching the eye of various pretty ladies and jetting around the world to locations that always look like a California studio back lot.
It is all very traditional and highly familiar – recognisable villains, obvious good guys and scenarios you’ve seen a hundred times before, right down to winking computers with switches, buttons, flashing lights and things that spin. There’s even the climax where the tick-tocking nuclear weapon needs disarming and either the red wire or the blue wire needs to be cut to save the world. But which one?
It’s directed by Ray Austin, who also died earlier this year, having made it to 91, one year more than McCallum. He’d started out as Martin Landau’s stunt double on Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, went on to choreograph the action in various episodes of The Avengers before graduating to directing. The action is pretty good for a TV budget, with the guys and their stunt doubles doing plenty of abseiling down ropes and leaping about convincingly. McCallum gets the lion’s share of the physicality, while Vaughn makes up the suave element of the action-hero identikit.
If you remember the series or have watched it on re-runs since, most of the familiar elements are here, from Jerry Goldsmith’s bongo-heavy theme tune (dicked about with a bit, but still familiar), the camera-spinning changes of location with an onscreen announcement that we are “Somewhere in Libya” or “Somewhere in Detroit”, the pens that double as communicators and the “Open Channel D” call sign, and the way the episode is described as an Affair – The Fifteen Years Later Affair specifically.
There are in-jokes – like the 007-style introduction of “Solo. Napoleon Solo” in a tuxedo at a gaming table. Later, while he’s chatting to would-be Soviet defector Andrea Markovitch (Gayle Hunnicutt), she refers to Bullitt and asks Solo if he’s seen it. Robert Vaughn was in fact in it. Wink wink.
There’s no Mr Waverly, because Leo G Carroll had died in 1972, which is where Patrick Macnee’s Sir John Raleigh fits in. And nor is there the traditional entrance to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters through a booth in a tailor’s shop, about which another arch gag is made.
It is all good fun and caperish, but most of all it works because the old Vaughn/McCallum magic is there. The two guys simply work very well off each other, with the sort of ease that primetime shows always aim for but don’t often achieve.
The cutural reach of this show was enormous, with spin-off movies, comics, annuals and absolutely loads of merch (guns, games, action figures). More recently there was Guy Ritchie’s 2015 movie reboot starring Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill, who have more marquee power than either McCallum or Vaughn ever had but couldn’t touch these two for screen presence as a duo. Vaughn and McCallum are, simply, the Men from U.N.C.L.E.
The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteeen Years Later Affair – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
