The Man from UNCLE

[Slim]

Did anyone else watch The Man from UNCLE as a kid? I don't think I'd watched one since the BBC showed them in the '60s.

I had the Napoleon Solo gun, the Dinky car and of course, the U.N.C.L.E triangular badge. I think it came with the gun, actually.

There was one episode in particular that left an impression on me. I can remember thinking about it the next morning at assembly, at the junior school I attended in Hartlepool.

This one had an especially high cool factor because most of it was set in the secret U.N.C.L.E base, which was not that common. There was a scene where the base was infiltrated, and the two agents go running to an elevator that's about to open, with their guns drawn. That stuck in my mind, for some reason.



So I had a look through an episode guide to see if I could find a likely episode to match, and The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair seemed to fit my vague recollection. It's available online here:

https://archive.org/details/the-man-from-uncle-s-1/The+Man+From+U.N.C.L.E.+S01E18+The+Mad%2C+Mad%2C+Tea+Party+Affair.mkv

[18 in the list].

I watched it. So very, very much of its time - slightly campy spy-fi with touches of that same wilfully bonkers trippy surrealism that you also saw in The Avengers, for example. There's a fantastic scene where a laser gun is deployed on the roof, to defend the base, controlled from the "radar room", full of machinery with flashing lights. The plot doesn't withstand scrutiny. But it's enormous fun.

I checked the BBC genome project. I must have watched this in May 1966.

https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?q=mad+tea+party+affair

[R6GYY]

I remember being thrilled by this, and a few other similar genre series of the time . . .

The Man From Uncle
The Champions
Mission: Impossible

Happy days 

[David L]

I used to love The Man From UNCLE. I think I had the car

[Slim]

This particular UNCLE episode has a motif that was something of a Mission: Impossible trademark - the old rubber face mask disguise thing.

There were a lot of really good American shows on British TV at that time. Some others that I recall are:

Land of the Giants
The Invaders
The Time Tunnel
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

[Nickslikk2112]

I had the gun. I got a finger end caught in it, pulled it out and the finger nail remained behind.

[R6GYY]

This particular UNCLE episode has a motif that was something of a Mission: Impossible trademark - the old rubber face mask disguise thing.

There were a lot of really good American shows on British TV at that time. Some others that I recall are:

Land of the Giants
The Invaders
The Time Tunnel
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

I seem to remember a thread back on t-n-m-s about the joys of Irwin Allen's productions. Not only did he produce a number of spell-binding science-fiction TV series, he also did a number of 'disaster' feature films, including an all-time favourite of mine, the star studded The Towering Inferno.

One of the film and TV greats.

[Slim]

I hadn't made the connection but I think all of those TV shows I listed were Irwin Allen productions, you're right.