I was born in 1960, I admit it and all the great TV shows of my youth that I remember naturally hail from the late 60's and early 70's. What a feast of programmes there seemed to be in those days, I just love it when one of the series I remember airs on TV again. Of course it was a time of escapism and fuelled by the success of the James Bond films, TV shows quickly picked up on variations of the spying game for our edification and delight.
The twist with "The Wild Wild West" was that it depicted two secret service agents saving the USA and / or the world from the master-villain-of-the week, usually an unhinged megalomaniac, only it was set in the mid-1800's out in, naturally, the Wild West. Every week, the intrepid duo of Jim West and Artemis Gordon (Robert Conrad and Ross Martin) faced up to the threat of some century-ago Blofeld-equivalent and did so with style, humour and excitement.
Conrad's Jim West loses no opportunity in getting his shirt off and displaying his six-pack and invariably gets romantically involved with some passing female in every "The Night Of..." adventure. He's the more all-action of the duo, gets into more scrapes and fights, indeed I believe Conrad did many of his own stunts in the show. Martin's Artemis Gordon ran back-up, usually intervening when his buddy was held captive as he usually was, donning flamboyant disguises to hoodwink the bad guys as he did so. He provided the show with a somewhat sardonic humorous slant, sort of Bones McCoy to Jim Kirk. Every episode saw one or both of them in a life-or-death situation which they always miraculously or ingeniously escaped, while the women in the show invariably play second-fiddle and are usually stereotypically pretty, helpless and adoring.
With a distinctive theme tune and title sequence too, it was a great way to spend a fun hour back in the late 60's, indeed it's still a great way to spend a fun hour today.
The twist with "The Wild Wild West" was that it depicted two secret service agents saving the USA and / or the world from the master-villain-of-the week, usually an unhinged megalomaniac, only it was set in the mid-1800's out in, naturally, the Wild West. Every week, the intrepid duo of Jim West and Artemis Gordon (Robert Conrad and Ross Martin) faced up to the threat of some century-ago Blofeld-equivalent and did so with style, humour and excitement.
Conrad's Jim West loses no opportunity in getting his shirt off and displaying his six-pack and invariably gets romantically involved with some passing female in every "The Night Of..." adventure. He's the more all-action of the duo, gets into more scrapes and fights, indeed I believe Conrad did many of his own stunts in the show. Martin's Artemis Gordon ran back-up, usually intervening when his buddy was held captive as he usually was, donning flamboyant disguises to hoodwink the bad guys as he did so. He provided the show with a somewhat sardonic humorous slant, sort of Bones McCoy to Jim Kirk. Every episode saw one or both of them in a life-or-death situation which they always miraculously or ingeniously escaped, while the women in the show invariably play second-fiddle and are usually stereotypically pretty, helpless and adoring.
With a distinctive theme tune and title sequence too, it was a great way to spend a fun hour back in the late 60's, indeed it's still a great way to spend a fun hour today.