Once a Crook

Well, it’s about damn time! The Web site TV Shows on DVD reports that the 1968-1970 spy adventure series It Takes a Thief, starring Robert Wagner as a globetrotting cat burglar turned U.S. government agent, is due out in an 18-DVD collectible set on October 11. Here’s that site’s description of the set:

Priced at $199.98 SRP, you will get all 3 seasons of the classic TV show from the late ’60s, presented in the original full-screen video format with English mono audio. There are English subtitles on board, too. Also included you’ll find extras such as a retrospective featurette, a new Robert Wagner interview, the “Magnificent Thief” version of the pilot episode, “A Matter of Larceny” interview with [producer] Glen A. Larson, and a collectible photo book.

It Takes a Thief was one of my favorite Saturday afternoon indulgences as a boy. Oh, how I longed to be Wagner’s suave thief/spy, Alexander Mundy. But far too many years have passed since I sat down to enjoy that series, with its ultra-cool theme by jazz pianist Dave Grusin. Add this DVD set, pricey though it will be, to my must-have list.

READ MORE: “It Takes a Thief Now Playing on a Computer Near You,” by Dean Brierly (CinemaRetro).

The “Thief” in Your Machine

For me anyway, this is no less good news than that TNT has picked up the cancelled NBC series Southland. According to the Web site TV Shows on DVD, “the classic Robert Wagner series It Takes a Thief, which ran on ABC for three seasons (from 1968 [to] 1970), is finally going to come to DVD. ... Right now the DVD is just gossip, officially, but it comes from a source that has always proven to be right on the money.” Let’s hope that holds true this time, too.

I missed seeing It Takes a Thief during its original run, but watched it with great relish (and sometimes behind my mother’s back) when it was broadcast on weekend afternoons later in the 1970s. Had a genie given me three wishes back then, I almost certainly would’ve spent one of them turning myself into Wagner’s suave thief, Alexander Mundy.

(Hat tip to Spy-fi Channel.)

It’s a Steal

While there’s still plenty of resistance to giving up books in favor of reading novels on computer screens or hand-held devices, the transition to watching more and more television on one’s PC or Mac seems considerably easier. Many U.S. networks have made their shows (or at least the latest episodes) available--for free--on their own Web sites, while separate streaming-video sites have begun gathering together older series for “rediscovery” by younger audiences. AOL Video’s In2TV site offers eps of Spenser: For Hire, The F.B.I., Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Eyes. Meanwhile, Hulu--a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.--is up with its own assortment of crime and mystery shows.

Included on the Hulu roster are Adam-12, Hill Street Blues, Remington Steele, The Rockford Files, Simon & Simon, and two generations of Dragnet. Classified as “dramas” instead of crime shows are Murder One, Hart to Hart, Ironside, and K-Ville. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention It Takes a Thief, the 1968-1970 series starring Robert Wagner. Dean Brierly recalls the allure of that last show in a fine essay for CinemaRetro:

As anyone among the Cinema Retro generation knows, Mundy was a world-class thief whose one mistake landed him in San Jobel Prison. The man who put him there? Noah Bain, head of a shadowy government spy agency known as the SIA. In the show’s pilot episode, Bain offered Mundy an expedient if unconventional way out: steal for the government in exchange for a full pardon. Along with the gig came a cover identity that appealed to every man’s inner hedonist: Mundy would pose as an international playboy replete with swank estate and a succession of beautiful SIA operatives to assist him. The catch was a Big Brother surveillance system inside the mansion and strict orders to keep hands off the girls. Needless to say, Mundy routinely circumvented the SIA cameras and subverted whatever scruples the ladies possessed.

When he wasn’t macking on Bain’s private reserve, Mundy kept busy pulling off a string of high wire capers in the world’s hottest jet set locations--all without breaking a sweat. Unlike the preening poseurs currently afflicting Hollywood, Wagner’s cool was organic and understated. As Alexander Mundy, he projected a breezy self-assurance untainted by arrogance or condescension, and maintained his sangfroid in the face of the most dangerous assignments Noah Bain threw his way, thanks to an unparalleled and seemingly inexhaustible skill set. Mundy could neutralize any security system, crack any safe, outwit any adversary and, not least, talk his way into the arms of just about any woman in sight. Little wonder he was the envy of every kid who came of age during the show’s original run.

So far, Hulu has 14 episodes of It Takes a Thief available, all from the first season. Sadly, those selections do not include the show’s pilot or first episode, both of which featured the eminently watchable Susan Saint James (later of McMillan & Wife). Let’s hope the site expands its offerings soon. Either that, or somebody ought to make this far-better-than-average series available on DVD.

(Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)

It’s What’s Up Front That Counts

For at least the last couple of weeks, novelist-screenwriter Lee Goldberg has been featuring the opening credits from vintage TV series on his blog, A Writer’s Life. First up was the main title from the 1974 British action-adventure series The Zoo Gang, boasting an instrumental theme by none other than Paul McCartney. (See the video here.) Then, earlier this week, came the opener from Petrocelli, a much better than average, 1974-1976 legal drama that starred Barry Newman as a Harvard-matriculated attorney who abandoned “the big city” in order to practice law in a tiny Southwestern town. Petrocelli’s theme music was composed by Argentinean pianist Lalo Schifrin, who also created the themes for Mission: Impossible, Mannix, and Starsky & Hutch. (See the Petrocelli video here.)

I don’t want to pilfer Goldberg’s good idea. But he has inspired me to share my own favorite opener, this one from the third season of It Takes a Thief (1968-1970), the ABC-TV series starring Robert Wagner as a suave professional burglar named Alexander Mundy, who’s released from prison on one remarkable condition: that he employ his unique skills on behalf of a super-secret U.S. government spy agency, the SIA. The Thief theme is credited to renowned jazz pianist and composer Dave Grusin. They just don’t make series openers like this one anymore. The intro begins here at the 4:56 mark:



If, as threatened, actor Will Smith goes ahead with a theatrical remake of It Takes a Thief, I can only hope that he’ll pick up the still-fresh, mood-setting Grusin theme.

While we’re on the subject of memorable opening credits from TV crime series, I can’t fail to mention a few other favorites, all of which are available (at least for now) on YouTube: The Rockford Files (theme by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter), Hawaii Five-0 (theme by Morton Stevens), Miami Vice (theme by Jan Hammer), Banacek (theme composed by Billy Goldenberg), Simon & Simon (theme by Mike Towers), and Ironside (theme by Quincy Jones).

Ain’t nostalgia grand?

LISTEN UP, FOLKS: Although (regrettably) it doesn’t offer accompanying video clips, the Classic Television Web site does make available theme-music selections from scores of older American TV series, including Adam-12, Barnaby Jones, Jake and the Fatman, Dragnet, Police Woman, and Spenser: For Hire.