User Reviews

In this thinking person's spy-mystery-comedy, clever is the byword. Twists and turns, constantly thought-provoking word-play, and always keep your wits about you. Luckinbill, Holm, and Crane are all magnificent. And the supporting cast is uniformly terrific especially Jagger. But, this was a star-making opportunity for Luckinbill and he made the most he possibly could out of it. If you get a chance to see this minor, unpretentious fun mystery, you should do so.

I can remember large parts of the original TV movie of this as well as the subsequent episodes of the series. Laurence Luckinbill was exceptional in this role. (Celeste Holm wasn't chopped liver, neither; she couldn't help but glow whatever she was doing.) It was a fascinating premise for a show that was, sadly, probably beyond a lot of the viewing audience at the time.

Ironically, the plots for the show were a little thin... although in retrospect, I think that this is more the zeitgeist of 70s television than anything else. (I have the complete run of Columbo episodes from years past, which suffers from similar problems.) The unfolding of the plot is really quite ritual, stylized in a way that has become rather brittle with age. Again, in the mid-70s, we weren't as sophisticated. Perhaps we hadn't seen enough PBS imports of British stuff, yet. :)

I'd love to see The Delphi Bureau come out on DVD.