As a last minute replacement for November’s #PrisTweet, we dusted off the swingin’, sexy TV crimefighter Honey West, starring an ocelot, Anne Francis and some other people. The show only ran one season with 30 episodes, but left an indelible impression. Since everyone had a truly groovy time, we’ll bring Honey back whenever there’s a gap in programming.
Hello again, everyone! I’m happy and excited to begin #Bond_age_TV’s latest look back into the heady world of 60s spy shows. The ending of Man From UNCLE made the future of the genre uncertain. American society was changing, and disenchantment with spies and foreign intrigue was translating into series getting cancelled. TV producers had to adapt or die. To that end, the spy shows were being blended with another TV mainstay: the cop show. Shows like Mission:Impossible started focusing instead on Organized Crime within the USA, as opposed to foreign governments. But the idea of battling foreign agents didn’t go away completely. In September of 1968, a show appeared which would find a perfect mixture of the spy show/cop show dynamic: Hawaii Five-0.
As a series, Hawaii Five-0 had the best of both worlds. It was primarily a cop show, featuring a crew of cops who worked in the exotic backdrop of Hawaii’s big island, fighting crooks and Organized Crime. At the same time, it could expand itself out into the world of the spy show by bringing international intrigue to the islands. This is laid out from the very beginning of the series, starting with the pilot TV movie, ‘Cocoon.’ The film features Steve McGarrett (as played by Jack Lord), investigating the supposed accidental death of an old friend from the Navy. Along the way he comes across the man who would become his archnemesis, Chinese agent Wo Fat (played by Khigh Dheigh). They would face one another numerous times over the run of the show, which turned out to be one of the longest running cop shows on TV. ‘Cocoon’ first aired on September 20th, 1968, and it was the start of what would turn out to be a 12-year run on TV, which would only be surpassed by Law & Order over 20 years later. This coming Wednesday, #Bond_age_TV is proud to invite one and all to livetweet the movie that started it all, starting at 9pm EST. Use the #Bond_age_TV hashtag. Be here. Aloha!
Due to a late postponement of #PrisTweet because damn that life part getting in the way of Krissy’s live tweets… I’ve pulled an underseen TV favorite off the shelf and into spot-start duty. Say hello to Honey West. (embeds appear below…)
Honey West was an American crime series that aired on ABC during the 1965-66 season. The series starred Anne Francis as a female private detective. Though the show deals with domestic “disturbances,” Honey West is most certainly cut from the same cloth as the contemporary spy shows of its day. The original character was created by Gloria and Forrest E. “Skip” Fickling in the late 1950’s for a series of novels (under the pseudonym G.G. Fickling). Forrest once described the character as a mixture of Marilyn Monroe and Mike Hammer. Her television adaptation was intended to be a direct American equivalent of The Avengers‘ Emma Peel and Cathy Gale. (By the way, Archer fans, Honey West had a pet ocelot.)
Join #Bond_age_ and @007hertzrumbe as we live tweet the first two episodes of the TV series HONEY WEST starring the fabulous and fashionable Anne Francis. Tonight at 9pm EST. Follow #Bond_age_TV hashtag.
S1 E1 – The Swingin Mrs. Jones #Bond_age_TV
S1 E2 – The Owl and the Eye #Bond_age_TV
Honey West – S1 E3 – The Abominable Snowman #Bond_age_TV
Hello again, everyone. In February of 2014, I was given the opportunity to livetweet TV spy programming on a regular basis by @007hertzrumble under the #Bond_age_TV banner. In March of 2014, I started programming episodes of The Man From UNCLE. I sometimes have commitment issues to ideas, so I wasn’t sure exactly how long I would continue it. The audience started small, but they were very loyal. I’d started planning episode by episode; eventually, I began planning the livetweets season by season. That planning has finally led us to this, the final #UNCLEtweet ever. We may do the movies from time to time, but as a regularly scheduled event, The Man From UNCLE has reached the end. Naturally, for the final livetweet event, we will be riffing the two-part series finale, The Seven Wonders of the World Affair. In the final episodes, Napoleon and Illya find themselves facing off against both THRUSH and a rogue UNCLE agent who is determined to end Mankind’s hostility permanently by pacifying the entire world with an army of geniuses and a docility gas. Guest stars this episode include: Barry Sullivan (TV’s The Man Called X and The Tall Man); Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!, The Naked Gun); Eleanor Parker (The Sound of Music, The Man with the Golden Arm); and Mark Richman (Agent for H.A.R.M.). Please put on your snazziest loafers and join us this coming Wednesday at 9pm EST to give The Man from UNCLE a fitting sendoff.
A long awaited update on the status on #PrisTweet – with only two more sessions left, I urge you to join us tomorrow (October 6th) and November 11th for the 4 final episodes of The Prisoner. Mostly because the final episodes of the series are the best – that is of course, you measure quality by how utterly crazy the episodes are. As far as #Bond_age_ goes, that’s an entirely fair method of determining how good Tweet Fodder is. This month’s theme, perfectly timed for Halloween, is Number 6 in Fancy Dress.
