A few years back, I started a separate blog for my interest in over-the-top spy films and television shows, the not-so-cleverly-titled Spy-Fi Channel. I posted a lot of stuff there in 2009, but over the next few years, as my interests turned more toward my 70s sci-fi nostalgia and the Space: 1970 blog, the spy site sort of slowly died. In fact, it was one of a couple of blogs that I gradually stopped updating - like my Guns In The Gutters site, devoted to my reviews of crime comics.

Anyway, I've been thinking I needed to a.) update this site more often and b.) clean up my online presence, so I'll be taking both of those zombie blogs offline. However, because I did put a lot of work into the material on those sites, I'll be taking some of that content and re-posting it here. This means that this site (which also has, much to my dismay, been too-infrequently updated of late) will be somewhat more lively in the coming months as I mix in a bunch of my spy-fi-related material (and crime comics reviews!) with any new personal and pop culture topics that may catch my fancy.

Which brings me to A Man Called Sloane.

A Man Called Sloane was a half-season adventure series that aired on NBC in 1979. It starred Robert Conrad (The Wild Wild West, Baa Baa Black Sheep) as Thomas Remington Sloane III, the (only) Top Priority agent for a secret organization called UNIT. Though the format harkened back to the 60s and shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., it was still very much a product of its time, with ludicrous plots, lots of cheesecake, and Conrad's patented macho swagger. Needless to say, I loved it as a kid.  Back in '09, I got my hands on a set of bootleg DVDs and reviewed all twelve episodes of the show. That represented a lot of time and work, so rather than let those posts disappear into the digital aether, I'll be re-running those reviews here over the next few months.

Of course, I'll be editing them a bit and adding a few new thoughts and observations (as I've watched most of the episodes more than once now). I even plan on writing at least one new article for the series, as I never reviewed the original T.R.Sloane TV pilot film (a/k/a Death Ray 2000), which starred Robert Logan as superspy Sloane.

As I mentioned above, it won't only be reruns here; I'll be getting back to posting those "Wednesday Covers," and will almost certainly have a Halloween post or two. I'll also continue to keep you updated on my various comics projects and will continue posting about cheesy B action movies, comic strips, etc.

Look for the first Sloane review on Monday.

A very stylish trailer for a new, Italian Diabolik television series, based on the classic Eurocomic. I wonder what the chances are of ever seeing this on my side of the Atlantic?

Still wandering the range with late-50s TV Westerns. Finished up the second season of Have Gun - Will Travel on DVD. The writing on the show is terrific and I think Richard Boone's Paladin is one of the all-time great television protagonists, but the picture quality on the official CBS discs is pretty poor, especially considering how much they charge for the sets. Still, if I can find the later seasons as inexpensively as I found S2, I'll probably pick them up.

Right now, I'm working my way through the first season of Bat Masterson, the 1958  series starring Gene Barry (Burke's Law, The War Of the Worlds) as the legendary gentleman gunslinger. Not quite as literate or innovative as Have Gun - Will Travel, it's still a really good half-hour Western, with well-written stories, great guest casts, and a charismatic, offbeat hero.

The DVDs are really nice, too - they're put out by an outfit called TGG Direct, and sport very good transfers from clean prints. Contrast is good, and the audio is clear and crisp. These are fully authorized DVDs, too, licensed from MGM. Much better looking than the Have Gun - Will Travel transfers (or the many public domain discs of old TV shows out there); they're about on a par with the Wanted Dead Or Alive discs I own. The price is extremely reasonable, too - where Have Gun - Will Travel sells for around $40 per season, Bat Masterson retails for $15 or less.

If you're into vintage TV Westerns, Bat Masterson - both the show and the DVDS from TGG Direct - comes highly recommended.

Bat Masterson Complete Season One

Bat Masterson Complete Season Two

As regular readers of this blog (if there are any at this point) are aware, I go through various "phases," where one genre of film or television dominates my viewing for a few weeks or - sometimes - months. I recently indulged in a late night binge of Eurospy movies from my video collection, and right now, I'm in the midst of a fascination with late Fifties TV Westerns.

I don't own a whole lot in the genre - I have the first season of Have Gun - Will Travel, the first season of Maverick, and all three seasons of Wanted Dead Or Alive on DVD. I thought I could watch more of these old Western series on Netflix Instant, but was very disappointed to discover that all they currently have available for streaming are a few Bonanza episodes - and I saw way too much Bonanza as a kid to watch it again now. So, I've been alternating between Have Gun episodes and Wanted episodes on DVD.

I wish I had all of the Have Gun - Will Travel seasons - Richard Boone's "Paladin" is one of my favorite TV characters ever - but those sets are pricey. I did find a discounted copy of the Season Two set online and recently ordered it, along with the first season set of Bat Masterson, starring Gene Barry. I've never seen Bat, but I'm a big fan of the actor, and his tongue-in-cheek detective series, Burke's Law, is one of my favorite "classic" TV crime shows. (Now that I think of it, VCI Entertainment really needs to get the remaining seasons of Burke's Law out on DVD soon....)

I hope to get the second season of Maverick when it becomes available next month, and, based on a recommendation by my pal - and Gravedigger collaborator - Rick Burchett, I'm thinking of  maybe picking up the Yancy Derringer series, which starred two-time Tarzan, Jock Mahoney, if I get a few extra bucks anytime soon. I'm a fan of the actor, and the New Orleans setting sounds promising.

So, how long will this 50's TV Western "kick" last? Who knows?

There are a few James Bond knock-offs that I remember watching on TV in the late 70s (& 1980) that I have never heard anyone else mention. One of these was Billion Dollar Threat, a 1979 TV movie that starred Dale Robinette as secret agent Robert Sands, who must foil the nefarious plan of mad scientist Horatio Black - played by none other than John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee - to destroy the ozone layer with a nuclear missile.

I actually taped this one off of TV, so I watched it a number of times. It was a pretty fair - if cheap - little Bondian adventure, written by Hammer Studios vet Jimmy Sangster (Deadlier Than The Male), who seemed to have a penchant for this type of stuff....

Because Sangster also wrote the 1980 ABC telefilm, Once Upon A Spy, which starred a pre-Cheers Ted Danson as a computer expert/reluctant spy who is drafted into a mission to stop another mad scientist - this time portrayed by The Man With The Golden Gun, Scaramanga, in the guise of Sir Christopher Lee - who has a laser cannon (another one?). I remember it as being a bit more deliberately campy than Billion Dollar Threat, in a Man From U.N.C.L.E. sort of way.

Sangster didn't write (I wonder how he missed out on this one), but legitimate 007 veteran Richard Maibaum (Goldfinger, Thunderball, et al) did, the same year's S*H*E - Security Hazards Expert, which starred Cornelia Sharpe as Lavinia Keane, a sort of female Bond in a globetrotting adventure that I remember watching but am unable to recall a single detail of. Omar Sharif played her adversary, an International blackmailer.

None of these are available on DVD, although S*H*E did get a VHS release.I would really like to see all of these again one day....

The David Janssen private eye series from 1974-76, Harry O, is now available (at least, the first season is) on Manufactured-On-Demand DVD from Warner Archive. Highly regarded as one of the best - and best-written - private eye shows of its era, Harry O was an unusually melancholy and realistic crime show, with Janssen's Harry Orwell pretty much defining the term, "weather-beaten detective."

I was too young to care much about it when it originally aired, but in the 80s, when I was really getting into P.I. fiction - especially authors like Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini, Robert J. Randisi, and Rob Kantner - I managed to catch the pilot film, Smile Jenny, You're Dead one afternoon on TBS and loved it. Somewhere around the same time one of the cable channels (maybe A&E) ran the series, and I watched it whenever I could. I like The Rockford Files better, but Harry O is probably the more sophisticated show.

The new DVDs from Warner Archive are admittedly pricey - as burned-to-order discs almost always are - but I'm going to try and find some way to add the set to my library eventually. According to the website, this first season set includes the first pilot film, Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On, which had some significant differences from the subsequent series. What's less clear is whether or not the set includes the second TV movie pilot, Smile Jenny, You're Dead - as Warner Archive has already released that title separately. I hope it's included; otherwise it'll cost another twenty-five bucks to complete the set....

I've been collecting Irwin Allen's Sixties sci-fi series, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, on DVD over the last few years, and at retail prices of  $25-$35 per half-season set, it's been going slow. I simply haven't been able - or willing - to shell out that much for only a half-season of a show - not when there are so many other things on my DVD wish list that I want to add to my video library that are more affordable.

Well, on Friday, Brandi and I swung by our local Best Buy  to see what they might have in the way of cheap Blu-rays. What I discovered was that they happened to have a bunch of TV-on-DVD sets on sale and, in particular, had all of the Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea sets marked down to just under $10 each.

So I finally snagged both volumes of Season 3, and I'll probably go back today or tomorrow and pick up the first half of Season 4 (I already picked up the second volume of that final season a few months ago) and complete my Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea collection.

Sure, it's silly stuff - especially the last two seasons - but I love it. It's definitely my favorite of Irwin Allen's genre shows. I like Time Tunnel (which I have on DVD) and Land Of The Giants (which I don't - yet), too. Have to admit, though... I've never been much of a fan of Lost In Space. I like the first, B&W season okay (and I own it on DVD), but I like those other shows more.

One thing that's been eating into our Halloween horror film watching has been the fact that the Blu-rays of the second season of Fringe have been showing up this month from Netflix, and Brandi and I keep binging on episodes. We didn't catch the show when it premiered - we didn't (and still don't) have cable - but a year or so ago, we found the first season on Blu-ray new at Wal-Mart for a ridiculously low price. As Brandi was a huge fan of Lost, and Fringe was from the same creator, (J.J. Abrams) we decided to pick it up.

We really enjoyed the show, but subsequent season sets were priced beyond our means. Eventually, we put the show on our Netflix DVD queue, and they started showing up in our mailbox a few weeks ago. We've just finished watching Season 2, and Season 3 discs should start showing up next week.

It's a fun show with a fascinating premise and a good cast. My particular favorite is John Noble as Dr. Walter Bishop. I love the fact that he's a mad scientist; a direct descendent of the characters that Boris Karloff played in all those Columbia B-movies back in the 1940s. In fact, I think the reason I like the show so much isn't because of the weird X-Files-like mysteries or the "alternate universe" mythology, but because it's the only TV show where a mad scientist is (essentially) the main character.

And although it's taken our attention away from the scary movies I'd intended to concentrate on these last few weeks, the show contains enough creepy and spooky stuff to still qualify as legitimate Halloween viewing.

A few years ago, when my wife and I lived in Florida, our cable package included the GoodLife Network. This channel specialized in old TV shows and Rascal scooter/men's enhancement product commercials. But one night a week, they ran a spy night (I Spy, The Avengers and The Persuaders) and on another, it was Warner Brothers private eye night, with back-to-back episodes of the "shared universe" P.I. shows 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye and Surfside Six. (No Bourbon Street Beat, though. I wonder why?) 

Anyway, although my wife can be kinda picky about old television shows, we both enjoyed 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye a lot. The shows were stylish, witty and featured fun ensemble casts and charming leads.

I'd love to have them all on DVD, but they've never been released on disc. I was talking about it with Brandi the other day, and it occurred to me that these shows would be ideal for the Warner Archive manufactured-on-demand DVD program. Like the many Hanna-Barbara cartoon shows that they've been issuing in complete series sets, the WB private eye shows would probably only be of interest to a comparatively small group of fans - but those fans would certainly be willing to pay to have them in authorized, complete season/series sets. They just started putting out The F.B.I. on DVD, so, obviously, they're not opposed to releasing some of their live-action TV back catalog.

I know I would collect them, if affordably priced. Anyone else out there want to see Warner Archives pull these great shows out of the vault?

And here's the original, classic Hawaii 5-0 opening credit and theme:

I'm not saying that they're all good shows - but I would still love to have theses series on DVD - especially Batman, Karen Sisco and Thundarr. Runners-up that didn't quite make the list include the Warner Bros. P.I. shows from the 60's (77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6), The Green Hornet, The Six Million Dollar Man and Buddy Faro.

1. BATMAN (1966) starring Adam West & Burt Ward


2. KAREN SISCO (2003) starring Carla Gugino & Robert Forster


3. A MAN CALLED SLOANE (1979) starring Robert Conrad


4. THE FANTASTIC JOURNEY (1977) starring Jared Martin & Ike Eisenmann


5. THE MAGICIAN (1973) starring Bill Bixby


6. THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN (1980) by Ruby-Spears


7. BANYON (1972) starring Robert Forster


8. TARZAN (1978) by Filmation Studios


9. TARZAN (1966) starring Ron Ely


10. PRIVATE EYE (1987) starring Michael Woods

As I've mentioned before, I don't have cable and can no longer receive broadcast channels since the switch to digital. The new, "improved" transmissions can no longer be snatched out of the air by our aerial, so where we once were able to watch "free TV," albeit with lousy reception, we can't get anything at all now. Hooray for technology!

We do, occasionally, watch new shows online, but I find watching shows and movies on my monitor to be both uncomfortable and somehow unsatisfying. Thus, for the last few years, we've watched the television series we're interested in on DVD. Some we buy, and some we rent through Netflix.

Last month, we re-watched the second season of Burn Notice again, and currently, we're working our way through the entire run of Farscape.

This is the second time we've watched the series, and the first time on the new A&E discs. We originally watched the series on the old ADV "Starburst" editions as they were released, about four years ago or so. Since they released each season in three volumes, with months between each volume, it took us a while to get through the four years of the show. Also, some of the first season discs were defective, and there were parts that we just couldn't get to play.

Well, we'd been thinking about re-watching Farscape for a while, and when we found out that the show had been re-issued in a more compact and technically re-mastered edition, we packed up our old discs and traded them in at Bull Moose Music, a local chain. The credit we got for the trade-ins covered most of the price of the new set. Yeah, we had to pay a little out-of-pocket, but it was worth it. The remastered transfers look better, there are some new extra features, and most importantly, it takes up only a third of the shelf space of the old sets.

The show itself is as good as I remembered; outrageous, action-packed space opera with remarkably high production values, a freewheeling spirit unlike any other SF series, and a delightful sense of the absurd. The Jim Henson creature shop devised some genuinely amazing aliens, and the special effects were, at the time, nearly feature film quality.

Last night, my wife picked up the first season of one of her favorite shows from the past, The Pretender. I suspect we'll probably be watching those once we finish up the last season of Farscape. I've only seen one episode of the show so far, and I'm not particularly impressed, but considering the stuff she's sat through for me, I'm willing to give it a shot.

In the wee hours of the morning, while she sleeps, I've been watching random episodes of Mission: Impossible. I received the seasons I was missing for Christmas, and I've been jumping around among the different seasons, watching two or three episodes a week. It's been interesting, seeing how the show evolved over seven years, and I enjoy watching, say, a second season episode with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain one night, and then a 5th season episode with Leonard Nimoy, Lesley Anne Warren and Sam Elliot the next - and maybe jumping all the way back to the first season the next night and watching Steven Hill lead the team.

I enjoy them all, but one thing I don't understand: if Cinnamon is such a famous model, and has her face on all those different magazine covers that Phelps pulls out of his file, how come nobody ever recognizes her?

Ahhh... This is actually how I first watched The Night Stalker - on the CBS Late Movie.

I was too young to be allowed to watch Kolchak when the show originally aired in prime time, but, by my teens, when I could stay up late once in a while, I discovered that CBS ran episodes regularly as part of their Late Movie rotation. Man, TV actually used to be good.

Someone has finally uploaded to YouTube the entire 1967 unsold pilot for Dick Tracy, produced by the producer responsible for the same era's Batman and Green Hornet television shows, William Dozier. With Ray MacDonnell as Dick and Victor Buono as the villiain, "Mr. Memory," the half-hour pilot falls somewhere between the camp of Batman and the somewhat more straight-faced Hornet.

MacDonnell's okay, but he's no Ralph Byrd!

Here's the whole show:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

While I am extremely excited to know that Tales Of The Gold Monkey will be coming to DVD next year, I can't help but wonder if we'll ever get 1982's other Raiders of the Lost Ark-inspired television series on disc someday. I'm talking about Bring 'Em Back Alive, of course, CBS' entry in the faux Indiana Jones sweepstakes, and a show that, for my money, was just as entertaining as Tales.

The tone of the shows were slightly different - while both programs traded in pulp adventure, Tales was more character-driven, like most Donald Bellasario productions. Bring 'Em Back Alive was more like old Republic adventure serials, with exciting stunts, a likable, two-fisted swashbuckling lead, and action-packed stories. Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5, Tron) played a highly-fictionalized version of real-life big game trapper Frank Buck, and the show was set in 1939 Singapore. It was fun stuff, with crocodiles, Nazis, tigers, spies, monkeys with guns (okay, one monkey with a gun) and a crimeboss/spymaster who was a dead ringer for George Zucco!

I actually have bootleg copies of both shows - they look like hell, of course - and while I think that Tales was probably a slightly better show overall, Bring 'Em Back Alive was/is damned enjoyable, too. Neither show lasted more than a season, which is a shame, and I may be wrong, but I think that for at least part of that season they aired opposite each other in some sort of numbskull network counter-programming that assured that both would fail.

I'm often accused of glorifying crap, or having poor taste in my entertainment choices, but I love adventure stories, and such tales are in short supply these days in print, movies and on TV. I would be a very happy guy if I could I have both shows, in high-quality DVDs, on my shelves to enjoy whenever I needed a little escape....

As I’ve established repeatedly in this blog, I’m a big fan of the fantasy genre. I love me my sword and sorcery sagas. So I was pretty surprised to discover the existence of this syndicated television series based on a popular series of novels by Terry Goodkind and produced by the same bunch that made Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules The Legendary Journeys a decade ago (both favorites of mine).

Legend Of The Seeker is pretty standard fantasy stuff: a young man (Craig Horner, who looks a bit like the unholy love child of Scott Baio and Nathan Fillion) discovers that he is "The Seeker," a legendary hero who has been chosen by fate to kill an evil tyrant and save the world. He is assisted in his quest by a lovely "Confessor" (Bridget Regan), a sort of priestess with magic powers, and a wise old sorcerer (Australian character actor Bruce Spence of The Road Warrior). Along the way to fulfilling his destiny, the Seeker and his companions help the helpless, protect the innocent and fight lots and lots of the villain’s lackeys.

Like I said, standard stuff. But it’s very well done. Produced by Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi and shot in New Zealand by the same crew that made Hercules and Xena, Seeker boasts great sets and costumes, breathtaking scenery, skillful stunt fighting and superior CGI special effects.

ABC Studios’ five-disc set comes in a standard-sized case and features all 22 episodes of the first season in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Supplemental material includes deleted scenes, audio commentaries on selected episodes, a behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of the show, and a featurette on author Terry Goodkind.

Legend Of The Seeker is a very good fantasy series, especially once you get past the first couple of episodes. The characters are well-drawn, the stories are entertaining and involving, and the production values are top notch. If you’re a fan of the genre, I strongly recommend checking it out.

I am actually a fan of the 80's television miniseries and weekly series V. That said, I also feel that aside from the first miniseries directed by Kenneth Johnson, which still holds up pretty well today, the subsequent installments never lived up to their potential. A small budget, the need to recycle effects footage, and the general "kistch factor" (for lack of a better term) of early-80s TV, all undermined the premise and its potential. That's not to say it wasn't fun, though, which is why I have the DVDs.

So, while I usually dread "reimaginings" and "reboots" of my old favorites, I am actually looking forward to this season's new version of V, and hope that it works.

I recently finished watching the second season of the Sixties television series The Invaders, which starred Roy Thinnes (The Norliss Tapes) as architect David Vincent, the only man on Earth to know that aliens are quietly infiltrating the human population in preparation for a full-fledged invasion.

It's probably one of the best pure science fiction shows that was ever produced for television, yet nobody talks about it much. Most likely because it only ran two seasons and didn't have quite enough episodes to be attractive for syndication, so it wasn't rerun much after its original network run. But it was a damned smart show, played straight and serious, with an over-arching "mythology" reminiscent of the ones we see on genre dramas today.

This wasn't camp. As conceived by independent auteur Larry Cohen (God Told Me To, Black Ceasar), The Invaders was TV's first real examination of sustained paranoia on a dramatic series. The alien invaders were indistinguishable from humans, except that they did not bleed, breathe or have a pulse. Some had oddly mutated pinky fingers that stuck out at an odd angle, but not all of them. They had infiltrated industry, the military, various police forces and institutions. They were allegedly emotionless. They were organized and ruthless. And they had cool rayguns and little discs that would give you a cerebral hemorrhage. Oh, and little crystals that could hypnotize you and make you do their will.

And the lone voice crying out to warn humanity? A handsome young architect who had the misfortune of seeing a saucer land late one night on a lonely desert road.

I've seen the series dismissed as being formulaic – Vincent uncovers an alien plot, tries to warn the authorities, is ignored, and then foils the plot himself before moving on. But that's really only the first half of the first season. As the series goes on, he manages to convince others of the extraterrestrial threat, and they become his allies. In Season 2, he actually joins a group of "believers," led and financed by a wealthy industrialist. By the end of the series, even the government is convinced, and preparing for war. I wonder what a third season would have been like?

It's a Quinn Martin production, and it feels very much like a sci-fi take on The Fugitive, Martin's popular hit of the same era. But it's influence has been huge, evident most of all in Chris Carter's The X-Files. (I suppose that's why he got Thinnes to guest star on several episodes.) It was the first ongoing, adult TV drama (as opposed to anthologies like The Outer Limits) to deal with the idea of an alien takeover, and it did so seriously, without goofy monster suits or inappropriate comic relief.

I never saw the show when it aired, nor in reruns later. I did have both the Big Little Book and Whitman juvenile novel based on the show (a very odd choice, as the show was clearly intended for adults), and I later picked up the paperback tie-in by Kieth Laumer. Some episodes were offered on VHS in the late 80's but they were priced beyond my budget at the time. Fortunately, both seasons are now available on DVD from CBS/Paramount, and they're highly recommended.

The transfers are excellent, and each episode is given an on-screen introduction by Thinnes. There are a couple of episode commentaries by Thinnes and producer William Ward, and the second season set has a full-length interview with the star. Both sets are attractively packaged.

I do wish the show was more highly regarded, and I'm glad that it's available again in an affordable, high quality format. Hopefully, this will allow others to get a fresh look at the show and re-evaluate it's place in the sci-fi TV pantheon.

The most popular television private eyes of the Seventies and the Eighties clash in a battle for investigative supremacy. In this corner, we have James Rockford (portrayed by the sublime James Garner) – Korean War vet, ex-con (he was innocent), con man, and loving son, while in this corner, we've got mustachioed Thomas Sullivan Magnum (the charismatic Tom Selleck), a Vietnam vet, former Naval Intelligence officer, and fashion disaster.

Now, Rockford's – arguably – more mature, and his prison experiences give him an "in" with the criminal element, as well as a number of contacts and informers that he can turn to while investigating his cases. Magnum, on the other hand, has a circle of war buddies and a wealthy –if unseen – patron, in the form of mysterious pulp novelist Robin Masters, whose resources he can exploit in pursuing his investigations. Rockford drives a gold Firebird, while Magnum drives a red Ferarri (although, it should be pointed out that at least Rockford owns his own car).

Both P.I.s struggle with their finances and take on far too many non-paying cases. Both also have maintained semi-romantic relationships with cute female lawyers. Rockford owns his own home – a beat-up mobile home in a restaurant parking lot in Malibu – while Magnum lives in the guest house of Masters' vast, Hawaiian estate, ostensibly in return for being the on-site security. This tends to mean that Rockford's domicile is much more frequently invaded by angry, sap-and-revolver-wielding thugs and desperate lowlife clients. I'm guessing that Magnum sleeps much more soundly.

Professionally, they both seem to be more-than-competent detectives, although (especially in early episodes) Rockford will sometimes quit a job when it looks to be getting too dangerous. On the other hand, one can't help wonder just what Magnum's success rate would be if he didn't have Rick and T.C. to lean on. Magnum is definitely more willing to use deadly force if it seems necessary, carrying his service .45 as a matter of course. Jim's gun is usually home in his cookie jar when he most needs it.

So, if you needed a private eye – excuse me, Magnum – private investigator, which would you turn to? Wry, solid – but sometimes less than tenacious Jim Rockford? Or the occasionally goofball, Hawaiian shirt-and-shorts-wearing Thomas Magnum?