GLUED TO THE TUBE

Time to Say 'U.N.C.L.E.'

Diane Werts | GLUED TO THE TUBE

October 22, 2001

IT WORKED LIKE gangbusters once before. So what's the problem now?

Spy shows -- the big splash of the 2001 fall season -- are sinking. ABC's "Alias,” CBS' "The Agency” and NBC's "UC: Undercover” are Nielsen nightmares for their networks, who were expecting big, very big things.

Why not? TV did very well in the wake of Bond, James Bond. Baby boomers and their echo offspring, the generations that now steer prime time, have soft spots for the shows spawned by that movie secret agent. Cable has since kept alive the '60s style of "The Man (and Girl) from U.N.C.L.E.,” "The Avengers,” "The Wild, Wild West,” "Mission: Impossible,” "I Spy” and, yes, even "Get Smart.” (You know a trend really clicks when even the spoof is a hit.)

Indeed, style is precisely the point -- of the genre's one-time success and its seeming current failure. Those vintage shows endure because they've got cool to burn. If it wasn't studly Napoleon Solo and Jim West packing lethal gizmos under tuxedos and skin-tight leather, it was "Avenger” Emma Peel's catsuit karate or John Steed's chipper quips. "M:I” was a stylistic overdose, all self-destructing audio tape assignments and a percussive score so hip it hit the Top 40. These shows had a dashing-ness about them, a devil-may-care attitude, despite their threat of world annihilation. Like our heroes weren't ultimately going to save the day. Not possible. Even if the mission was im-.

Well, now it's in-, as in inconceivable. And it isn't just the bad timing of these new TV spies arriving just as actual "bad guys” pull off the most spectacular clandestine mission ever. The deeper problem is that our expectations have changed -- in the real world, obviously, but also in the universe of TV storytelling.

That first tube spy spate wasn't so much about world stakes as about gamesmanship. The villains were demented loons or abstract organizations seeking power for its own sake. "Wild, Wild West” nemesis Dr. Miguelito Loveless, a dwarf, was a mad scientist. "U.N.C.L.E.” baddie Mother Muffin was Boris Karloff in a dress. Even the era's most reality-based agents, the "I Spy” pair of Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, approached their work as a more cerebral game, perhaps chess. The rules seemed clear. The adversaries operated from essentially the same culture. And issues were never really the issue. These shows were running in the 1960s -- amid the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam combat over opposing doctrines -- and yet communism barely merited a mention?

Kiss that escapism goodbye. Ideologies are crucial to the new spy shows. They cite opposing value systems. They name names. NBC says "UC” portrays "an elite Justice Department crimefighting unit” that takes down international drug lords. At CBS, "The Agency” is not only "the first television series ever granted permission to film inside CIA headquarters,” but it so particularizes its threats that the network already has had to pull two episodes, about anthrax and a terror bombing (the latter actually naming Osama bin Laden). Still to premiere Nov. 6 is the buzzed-about Fox entry "24,” a layered adventure depicting one real-time hour per episode. Kiefer Sutherland's hero "heads up the government's Counter Terrorist Unit,” asked to thwart the plot to assassinate a black presidential candidate. Fox quickly cut a premiere scene involving an exploding airliner.

See how specific these details are? And how reliant on the real world? That was no problem for '60s spies, working in broad strokes in a universe all their own. Evil was stylishly thwarted by each hour's end. Those demarcations are gone. On ABC's "Alias,” the young student/spy heroine works for the CIA. But there's the main agency and then there's a group of rogue operatives -- although they could be the reverse of what we think, which is the reverse of what our heroine had been told. Which is another reality-based message: Nothing is what it seems.

On top of that, we have TV's longtime trend toward delayed drama gratification. Trying to reflect reality and deepen character, plots can stretch for weeks. Some ends stay loose forever. Yet that drama mold is being pulled every which way right now. Why were NBC's three "Law & Order” series all among Niel.sen's top 20 series last week? Could be they're just so wonderful -- or it could be that their single-thread weekly resolution meets a new desire for closed- end storytelling.

The messages are mixed. So the new spy shows are mixed up. "UC” aspires to nuanced realism, yet lingers on cool shots of cutely coiffed Jon Seda two-fistedly firing automatic weapons. "Alias” undercuts its human narrative of father-daughter trust with so much disjointed kiss-kiss-bang-bang that the show plays like a movie trailer. These characters don't seem to exist except in our presence. "Alias” and "UC” feature nerdy high-tech gadgetmakers designed less as persons than animate collections of quirk.

The machinery they're there to explain is more real than they are. "The Agency” spotlights lab forensic tactics, "C.S.I.”-style. The genre's ubiquitous computers and electronic surveillance are hardly the pie-in-the-sky gadgetry of some "U.N.C.L.E.” scheme. They're everyday elements of our own lives, right here, right now. The same goes for the stakes this time around. They're closer to home and more realistically probable than those old souped- up supercapers.

Spy scripters are stuck. They seem to want timely substance, but also timeless style. They want authentic texture, but also Hollywood polish. They want real people who resonate like superheroes. These diametrics are hard to reconcile. Coming close in its no-nonsense pilot is "24.” But nobody has seen the second episode. And you have to follow the show week to week for it to make sense. Quite a crisis. Where's Napoleon Solo when we need him?