Once Upon a Spy

I guess this television Movie of the Week planned to be back-door series pilot. A hokum version of The Man from Uncle with the James Bond like theme after the opening titles.

It stars a young Ted Danson as a government computer expert called in by a mysterious American intelligence service to track down a supercomputer stolen by dastardly Christopher Lee.

The reluctant Danson is paired up with attractive, blonde agent Mary Louise Weller and they make a good pair and Danson does well with the comedy and drama and has some literate lines although the plot is tosh. The final challenge set by Lee is called the Cat and the Canary with some Pacman type graphics.

As it was shown in 1980 a few years before films like Wargames and just before the Home Computer boom of the early 1980s, you have big computers the size of several walls that play a nifty game of chess just like the supercomputer in Wargames.

Danson shows talent which would make him a star a few years later in Cheers, but the the film was rather flimsy. It lacked the spark of the Man from from Uncle and I could not take seriously the secret entrance to the agency's office via a Tunnel of Love ride. From the short of the big wooden roller coaster, it looked like Knott's Berry Park!

"Once Upon a Spy" is a TV movie featuring Ted Danson as a computer genius and Christopher Lee as an evil computer genius, Marcus Velorium, bent on controlling the world...much like a Bond villain. But unlike Bond, there is no super-spy to stop the madman...only nice-guy Jack (Danson).

Being 1980, the concepts of computers sure isn't what we think of today. So, when a supercomputer that is the size of a city block is stolen, folks take notice. As a result, one of the foremost NICE computer scientists, Jack, is brought to a top secret location to talk to some humorless woman...and she recruits him to help investigate the theft. Naturally, the computer is being used to vaporize things from space...and I hate when that happens.

As I said above, in many ways this plays like a Bond film....a really bad one featuring a leading man who seems completely out of his element. I think this might have worked had it been more of a parody. Instead, however, it just seemed annoying and childish....and would not appeal to most adult viewers...unless you are curious what Danson was doing before he became famous. Even with the scene-chewing Lee as the baddie, this is pretty limp and dated.

Neat little TV movie, in the spirit of "The Men From U.N.C.L.E." A pre-Cheers Ted Danson is partnered with an athletic female lead, and Christopher Lee is always good value as the villain. Former Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster had a hand in the story.

This strangely endearing Movie of the Week features Ted Danson as a computer expert reluctantly pulled into the orbit of a mysterious American intelligence service run by grand dame Eleanor Parker. Parker needs his expertise to track down super villain Christopher Lee, a wheelchair bound businessman with his eye on world domination via a super weapon and control of commercial space satellites. Danson is teamed up with secret agent Mary Louise Weller, an attractive and almost believable actress who does her best with the rather hackneyed dialogue. Danson gets the best stuff from screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and shows why he went on to be one of America's favorite comic actors of the decade, and Lee seems to be having a grand time. Good fun if you're in the right mood.

This early starring role for Ted Danson is a fairly run-of-the-mill TV movie - given class by the presence of Eleanor Parker as spymistress The Lady' - depicting a diabolical attempt to rule the world by Christopher Lee.

Beginning with a striking title sequence it memorably concludes (SPOILER COMING:) with Mary Louise Weller as the delightfully named Page Tannehill forced to take part in a game of Cat and Mouse with glacially malevolent henchwoman Irena Ferris.