"I Spy" covered a helluva lot of bases in its original sixties run:

First and foremost, Bill Cosby as co-star, co-hero, and co-everything to Robert Culp. Cosby praised Culp for his willingness to be so sharing at that time; the series began with Cosby as a bit more of a sidekick and rapidly moved him up to an equal. Cosby got several episodes with black love interests and co-stars (like Nancy Wilson and Jim Brown) I believe that I Spy was simply not shown on NBC affiliates in some Southern states.

But second: in the first and second seasons, the show was filmed largely on location in international locales: Japan in the main, then Hong Kong, I believe, then Italy, then Mexico. Producer Sheldon Leonard, who had banked strongly on Cosby, also banked on the lure of location travel footage. Meanwhile, "The Man From UNCLE" did Europe and Asia on the MGM backlot, with the same two or three interior sets used for practically EVERYTHING. (As it wound down on a lower budget, "I Spy" came home, with "exotic" episodes filmed in Palm Springs and San Francisco.)

And third: The show could be hilarious. Cosby and Culp were an early version of Butch and Sundance (and perhaps a late version of Hope and Crosby), bouncing one-liners off of each other at the speed of sound. It got a litle "arch" after awhile. (Don Adams brought a black comedian on "Get Smart" and the two guys did a perfect impression of Cosby and Culp...with Culp as a guest star Drunken Waiter.) But the comedy was also often quite good, with Cosby using his famous storytelling timing while Culp's line delivery came out in his own sing-song style.

I recall these lines, delivered sequentially to a badguy guard:

Guard: (About Cosby) Who is he?

Culp: He's a second-story man.

Cosby: That's right. I'm the guy with the second story when the first one doesnt' work.

Whereupon they double-team the guard and knock him out.

There was also once an episode action climax where Culp had to fistfight a villain in the ocean while Cosby stood right at the edge of the water, refusing to help and thus get his new tennis shoes wet.

And finally: "I Spy" could be very very tough. Culp and Cosby killed people without remorse, beat them quite realistically in fights, and sacrificed double agents without mercy. Including women. (In one episode, Cosby exposed Culp's lover as a double agent, and then goaded Culp into a brief fight so that Culp could vent his heartbreak and anger.)

Bill Cosby had a distinctively tough and macho side that was allowed to "come out" on "I Spy," and Culp could match him in mercilessness. For a funny show, "I Spy" took the game of spying as deadly serious.

btw, the Eddie Murphy/Owen Wilson movie was a travesty version of pretty much everything that the TV show was about: race, intrigue, comedy, toughness. A typical modern Hollywood studio joke version of what was really quite a serious and artistic TV show.

Excellent review. Slate should consider hiring you.

Oh, jeez, luca, I didn't realize that was you till after I clicked post. Of course it's an excellent review.

Well, thank you.

I'll take this opportunity to add that "I Spy" had one of those great opening credits sequences and theme songs (I miss them very much; "Mission:Impossible," "Secret Agent,"and "The Man From UNCLE" had them, too.)

The lush, hip music built slowly on a black-on-white shadow figure of Robert Culp playing tennis (his character was a tennis pro in the early "pilot version" of the tale), turning into Culp shooting a gun. Then we got the exciting theme song with clips from the night's show unfurling under Culp's watchful eyes: gleeful, scared, aroused, amused, etc. A great sequence; the way they used to be.

How was Culp photographed as a black-shadow-on-white background? Well, it was low tech in the 60's: Culp wore a white suit and white paint on his face and hands against a BLACK background, and the image was printed "negative."

As always thanks, luca, as soon as I saw the "I Spy" review, I knew you'd write a cool post. That was a great show, one of the reasons I started playing tennis, although there wasn't much tennis on the show. Wasn't Cosby his coach ? They were the coolest, and the opening was brilliant. Thanks

Thank you. Yes, in the earliest episodes of "I Spy," the set-up was that Culp was a "globe-trotting tennis pro" and Cosby was his coach, thus allowing both men to travel the world together undercover as agents. Eventually, this premise was "low-balled" and not followed much, as I recall, though Culp playing tennis-shooting in the credits stayed in.

When Don Adams did his "I Spy" spoof on "Get Smart," Maxwell Smart went undercover as a globe-trotting TABLE tennis pro (aka "ping pong") and the black comic Stu Gilliam did the Cosby part as his coach.