Product Description
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The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - The Complete Collection
Robert Vaughn and David McCallum star as a team of secret agents
battling the global crime organization THRUSH. Under the aegis of
the United Network Command for Law and --
U.N.C.L.E.--the dapper, suave Napoleon Solo (Vaughn) and the
equally dashing Illya Kuryakin (McCallum) jet to exotic
locations, defending the world from evil, chaos and bad taste in
this hit spoof on the espionage genre.
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For Baby Boomers, owning a season or two of a fondly remembered
TV series on DVD is enough to satisfy any nostalgic yearnings.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., though, warrants the full-series
. It's a wild '60s flashback to the Espionage era that
was ushered in by Ian Fleming's James Bond adventures. According
to a series retrospective that's just one of this cleverly
packaged set's prodigious extras, Fleming himself was recruited
to create a series for American television. His contribution
was the name "Napoleon Solo," the moniker of a crime boss in
Goldfinger. That movie, which would kick Bond and mania into
overdrive, had not yet opened when viewers were introduced to
Robert Vaughn's Solo and David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin, agents
of the United Network Command for Law and . This
covert agency operated out of Del Floria's Tailor Shop in New
York under the command of true Brit Alexander Waverly (Leo J.
Carroll, playing much the same character he portrayed in North by
Northwest). The Man from U.N.C.L.E. offered a bit of hope in Cold
War America that an American and Russian could work together to
stop a common enemy, THRUSH, a ruthless organization bent on
world domination. The intriguing conceit of The Man From
U.N.C.L.E. was to give audiences an empathetic surrogate who
would be plucked from their humdrum lives for whirlwind
adventures with Solo and Kuryakin. In the pilot episode, Patricia
Crowley guest-stars as a housewife who acts as bait to foil the
plans of her former college boyfriend, who is plotting the
assassination of a world leader. In a series benchmark, "The
Never-Never Affair," a pre-Get Smart Barbara Feldon stars as an
U.N.C.L.E. translator who unwittingly becomes involved in actual
espionage. Seasons one and two are the series' best, with a
stellar roster of guest stars ("The Project Stri Affair"
features the first onscreen pairing of William Shatner and
Leonard Nimoy), stylish direction by directors who would go on to
some renown (Michael Ritchie, Richard Donner), smart scripts, and
great action (a movie theatre shoot-out in "The Never-Never
Affair"). In its third season, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. adopted
Batman's campy and absurdist tone with shark-jumping results
While this season has its share of groaners (in one episode,
Sollo watusis with a gorilla), several "Affairs" stand out. Jack
Palance and Janet Leigh as a long cool woman in a white dress are
great villains in "The Concrete Overcoat Affair." Harlan Ellison
wrote the witty "The Pieces of e Affair," in which he takes
some sly digs at television and literary critics (a THRUSH
operative is a book reviewer). Joan Collins makes like Eliza
Doolittle in a dual role as a Bronx stripper and a countess in
"The Galatea Affair." The series went back to basics in Season
Four, but by then, The Avengers was a bigger hit and the writing
was on the wall for this once trendsetting series. This lavish
box set affair contains upward of ten hours of bonus features,
including the unaired series pilot, a series retrospective, an
interview with a reunited Vaughn and McCallum, dossiers on each
season's guest stars, one of the U.N.C.L.E. feature films edited
and expanded from a two-part episode, segments about the great
gadgets and cool music, U.N.C.L.E. designs and blueprints, and
season-specific booklets.This definitive box set does full
justice to a series that had such an impact on popular culture
(as witness the bonus Tom & Jerry cartoon, "The Mouse From
H.U.N.G.E.R."). More than a blast from the past, The Man From
U.N.C.L.E. is still a potent blend of "cloak and swagger."
--Donald Liebenson