THIS BILLING, should you choose to accept it, contains gags only marginally less predictable than the entire sum of this well-worn, endlessly re-spun kitschathon, and accordingly will self-destruct in the time it takes to list the principal protagonists who seemed perpetually adept at persuading East European government security guards that they really were just a bunch of contract cleaners in overalls: PETER “AIRPLANE” GRAVES, MARTIN “SPACE 1999” LANDAU, BARBARA “SPACE 1999 AS WELL” BAIN, GREG MORRIS, STEVEN HILL, BOB “VOICE ON TAPE” JOHNSON and LEONARD “CENSORS INDICATE” NIMOY.
Richardpd
June 25, 2023 at 10:10 pm
This was often shown in the weekday 6pm slot on BBC in the 1980s, along with Star Trek & M*A*S*H.
I didn’t get much chance to see it as my Dad would usually be wanted to watch the news!
Unlike the many of the other oldies, it didn’t get another run in the 1990s on BBC2.
Richardpd
March 29, 2024 at 4:44 pm
This had one of the catchiest ever theme tues, which more people have heard than actually watched any of Mission: Impossible.
Peter “Original Nordberg” Lupus was also a regular for most of the run.
Over the years there were a few cast changes, Orthodox Jew Steven Hill was let go because he insisted on not working on the Sabbath, which made it hard to film around his absence. Later on Landau & Bain left over contract issues, while Leonard Nimoy filled the master of disguise gap well, the show struggled without a steady female agent.
This & a gradual reduction in the budget led to it being axed in the early 1970s, by this time the were mostly dealing with American criminals rather than travelling abroad.
It was revived in the late 1980s to fill the schedules during a writers strike, being filmed in Australia with reworked old scripts to get around the strike. Of the original cast only Peter Graves was a regular, & the self destructing tape became a CD.