Season 1
The show’s first season was in black & white. Rolfe’s genius was to create a kind of Alice in Wonderland world, where the monotony of everyday life would intermittently intersect with the looking glass fantasy of international espionage which lay just beyond mundane everyday life. The U.N.C.L.E. universe was one where the weekly “innocent” would get caught up in a series of fantastic adventures, in a battle of good and evil. In its idealistic depiction of an international organization that transcended borders and agents of all nationalities worked together, Rolfe’s U.N.C.L.E. anticipated Gene Roddenberry’s interstellar United Federation of Planets in “Star Trek” two seasons later. Rolfe also skillfully blended deadly suspense with a light touch, reminiscent of the best of Hitchcock. In fact, U.N.C.L.E. owes just as much to Alfred Hitchcock as it does Ian Fleming, the touchstone being North by Northwest, where an innocent man is mistaken for an agent of a top secret organization, one of whose top members is Leo G. Carroll. This role led to Carroll’s “Waverly” role.
U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York City were most frequently entered by a secret entrance in Del Floria’s Tailor Shop. Another entrance was through The Masque Club. Mr. Waverly had his own secret entrance. Unlike the competing TV series I Spy however, the shows were overwhelmingly shot on the MGM back lot. The same outside staircase was used for episodes set throughout the Mediterranean and Latin America, and the same eucalyptus dirt road on the back lot in Culver City stood in for virtually every continent of the globe. The episodes followed a naming convention where each title was in the form of “The ***** Affair”, such as “The Vulcan Affair”, “The Mad, Mad, Tea Party Affair”, “The Waverly Ring Affair”, and “The Deadly Quest Affair”, the only exceptions being, “Alexander the Greater Affair”, parts 1 & 2. The first season episode “The Green Opal Affair” establishes that U.N.C.L.E. itself uses the term “Affair” to refer to its different missions.
Rolfe managed to make the implausibility of it all seem not only feasible but entertaining. Frogmen emerging from wells in Iowa, shootouts between U.N.C.L.E. and THRUSH agents in a crowded midtown Manhattan movie theatre, top secret organizations hidden behind innocuous brownstone facades — this was a parallel universe that lay just beyond our own.
The series also began to dabble in science fiction-based plots, beginning with “The Double Affair” in which a THRUSH agent, made to look like Solo through plastic surgery, infiltrates a secret U.N.C.L.E. facility where a massive weapon called “Project Earthsave” is stored; according to dialogue within the episode the weapon was developed to combat alien threats to Earth.
Rolfe left the show at the conclusion of the first season, frustrated by lack of recognition of his role in the show’s success and his lack of monetary compensation.
In its first season The Man from U.N.C.L.E. competed against The Red Skelton Show on CBS and Walter Brennan’s short-lived The Tycoon on ABC.
Seasons 2-4
Switching to color, U.N.C.L.E. continued to enjoy huge popularity but the new producer, David Victor, read articles that called the show a spoof and that is what it became. Over the next three seasons, no fewer than five different show runners would supervise the U.N.C.L.E. franchise, and not one of them had a clear understanding of what made the show’s unique qualities. Also, U.N.C.L.E. had spawned a swarm of imitators. In 1964, it was the only American spy show on American TV; by 1966, there were nearly a dozen. In a vain attempt to emulate the success of ABC’s mid-season hit, Batman, which had taken the nation by storm upon its debut in spring of 1966, U.N.C.L.E. devolved into self-parody and slapstick.
This campiness was most in evidence during the third season, when the producers made a conscious decision to increase the level of humor (though second season had shown a considerable increase towards a farcical approach with “The Yukon Affair” and “The Indian Affairs Affair”). With episodes like “The My Friend the Gorilla Affair” (which featured a scene in which Solo is shown dancing with a gorilla) the show tested the loyalties of its supporters and this direction resulted in a severe ratings drop, and nearly resulted in the show’s cancellation. It was renewed for a fourth season and an attempt was made to go back to serious storytelling, but the show’s final producer, Anthony Spinner, turned it into a grim, plodding shadow of its former self, and it was cancelled midway through its fourth season.
The theme music, written by Jerry Goldsmith, changed slightly each season. Goldsmith only provided four original scores and was replaced by Morton Stevens, who also composed four scores for the series. After Stevens, Walter Scharf did six scores, and Lalo Schifrin (who later wrote the memorable Mission: Impossible theme) did two. Gerald Fried was composer from season two through the beginning of season four. The final composers were Robert Drasnin, Nelson Riddle and Richard Shores. The music reflected the show’s changing seasons – Goldsmith, Stevens and Scharf composed compelling and dramatic scores in the first season using brass, unique time signatures and martial rhythms, Gerald Fried and Robert Drasnin went for a lighter approach in the second, employing harpsichords and bongos and by the third season, the music had become pure farce exemplified by an R&B organ and saxophone version of the theme. The fourth season’s strained attempt at seriousness was duly echoed by Richard Shores’ somber and uninspired scores.
