Very well executed

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

I was quite young when this series was filmed, but remember the re-runs quite fondly. I have to echo the sentiments I've seen expressed. After finding 2 seasons of episodes on Hulu, I have engaged in an orgy of I Spy watching.I don't think that we in modern (2009) American culture really remember just how recently it was that the rest of the world was truly mysterious. In the 1960s and early 1970s, going out for Chinese food, even in New York and some other cities with Chinatowns was a bit of an event. We certainly didn't have 10 places that would deliver cuisine from pretty much any culture of the world directly to one's door, as even the suburbs often do today.It is with that backdrop that I would call any prospective viewer's attention to the often breathtaking location shots in this series. Not only do you get a real feel for how various parts of the world looked, but you get to do so in a time when telephones weren't always right there in a pocket, and a car was a massive yet often stylish thing.In a time now when it seems no drama can run for more than 10 minutes without something exploding, I Spy still holds the attention of the viewer, transporting them to places we've not been (and can't go back to in time), while presenting themes that recur even in a post-Cold War world.Alexander Scott is a genteel man, but in no way effete or effeminate, despite his education. He also was someone who came from the city and worked his way to an exceptional education. Scotty tries, wherever he is in the world, to be the antithesis of the "Ugly American", but is a patriot at the same time. His skills as a polyglot certainly don't hurt. Kelly Robinson is a little more coarse than Scott, but not above finding opportunities for adult frivolity and perhaps even silliness. Though occasionally falls off the straight-and-narrow, is an upstanding guy by most modern standards. As someone who has lived and worked in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. and the government it houses for most of my life, I find it refreshing that these characters can discuss some of the moral vagaries around their jobs and missions without immediately leaping (as characters seem to in modern movies) to defection or total dissipation. (Don't even get me started about the first Mission:Impossible movie.) Yes, sometimes they face some difficult ethical choices, and they do the best they can, but as you'd expect, some choices weigh more heavily than others on them.The thing that makes I Spy resonate with people is that these two seem like normal guys. Granted, one is brilliant and they're both very highly trained to do an exotic job, but they're all too human while still, in some humble way, being heroic.

In a world of spy spoofs like the Avengers, the Man from UNCLE, and, yes, even the Wild, Wild West, I Spy breathed fresh CIA air into the mix. There was something edgy (not as edgy as Secret Agent Man) and real in the super villain free world throughout which Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott cavorted. Cool graphics announced each episode with Robert Culp as Kelly Robinson (who spied under the cover of being a world class tennis player) morphing from a racquet wielding serve-and-volleyer to a handgun brandishing, enemy-stalking agent. The haunting theme music is as recallable as Star Trek's even though I haven't heard it since the mid 60's. Yes, I just admitted to being a teen fan of the show. My views are therefore time colored. A card carrying nerd at the time, I reveled vicariously in any number of these kinds of shows. I pulled the plastic P38 from my Man from UNCLE shoulder holster and took aim at various on screen enemies from my top bunk bed superior vantage point. I tried to teach myself tennis banging wildly at a viaduct near our home. I even took for a brief period to introducing myself to girls as Kelly, not a complete lie since it is my surname. None of this, however, was as bad as when I shaved back my temples a couple years earlier in a vain attempt to simulate Robert Vaughn's receding hairline when I was a 14 year old Man from UNCLE zealot. I digress, and this has turned into a review about teenage boy obsessions instead of a critique of the I Spy series. Can you really critique something that affects your outcomes almost as much as your first love did – perhaps more so? Maybe it was because I was fatherless as a teen. These spy guys were the mentors and the role models I so sorely lacked. They taught me the virtues of standing up against villainy, developing rich friendships with at least one other trustworthy guy, and to keep a stiff upper lip even when you never win the Emmy. Robert Culp was, in fact, quite gracious every year when Bill Cosby would beat him out of it. Of course, Cosby's Alexander Scott was brilliant (and not just because he was a Rhodes Scholar – insert laugh track here). The sum of their complementary parts managed every week to be greater than the whole. This period of my life feels remarkably clear (aside from my skin). I think it's because shows like I Spy, many of the aforementioned and of course Star Trek made such powerful imprints on my psyche. They showed boys how to be men (including not to be afraid of liking girls). I would recommend this series to anyone who wants to return to a wonderful time in television history (or in their own lives as in my case). There were many now recognized to be classic shows, and this one is very near the top of that list is my memory.

Robert Culp didn't "phone in" his performances. One throw-away shot had him discover a dead body just before a commercial break, and the expression on his face was genuinely intense.The show was ground-breaking for showcasing black talent. Yes. And huzzah for that! But it was a cracking good show regardless of racial issues. Among the many reasons already mentioned, the heroes were vulnerable. They were not stronger, better-armed or backed up by SWAT teams ready to rappel from helicopters. They often got into situations where they elected to run ... yes, RUN! Like intelligent, realistic men when facing superior odds. They were beaten (temporarily) more than a few times, and sometimes were close to death. And they weren't the only heroes in the program, as secondary characters appearing only in that episode would step in and prove useful."I, Spy" turns out to be superior Cold War fodder in that it showed perhaps the most realistic (although certainly still unreal, being it was early television) depiction of the stalwart American intelligence operatives trying to keep a lid on a shifting world of mayhem, out on the edge, largely alone.And the friends, with humor and intelligence, leveraged each other into a team more formidable than three independent agents could ever muster.These fellows showed a healthy appreciation for good things and fine women, but when the chips were down they were quick to be Boy Scouts ... and made it look convincing and even "cool." It is childishly acceptable and common to make fun of the mores of those days, but having grown up on Norman Rockwell I can tell you that the concept of being a "good guy" was serious in those days, and many men behaved with a genuine courtesy and courage that seems unrealistic today.Cosby deserved his Emmies ... but Culp really supplied better performance than almost anyone else in those years.Looking for a new favorite? Something you haven't already memorized and become slightly tired of? Get these DVD's and make your acquaintance with two of the coolest, yet still "upright" heroes fictional America ever produced.

Apparently only one comment a year is allowed for this show, so here's 2002's.The misgivings that I've got about the Eddie Murphy/Owen Wilson take on "I Spy" would seem to be justified by most accounts (even allowing for the presence of the scrumptious Famke Janssen), and now that Carlton Direct has closed down it's unlikely repeats of this fine spy show will be back on British television in the near future. Too bad.Unlike most other series, the adventures of Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott (spies under the guise of a tennis player and his coach, played by Robert Culp and Bill Cosby respectively - the latter won three Emmys in succession for his performances, which are indeed easier to take than his subsequent incarnation as the endlessly self-adoring Dr. Cliff Huxtable) benefitted from actual location shooting around the world and from intelligent scripts, some by Culp himself - though not "To Florence With Love," a two-part story which had a most unusual ending in part one; our heroes are trying to get information from someone by threatening to cover him completely in plaster of Paris, and it ends with the would-be stooge about to be totally closed up. (He cracks at the start of part 2, obviously, but there's no doubt that they really would let him suffocate if he hadn't.)The chemistry between Culp and Cosby and the great theme music by Earle Hagen (plus scores from him and Hugo Friedhofer - bless Film Score Monthly for issuing a CD of music from the series) are two more reasons this plays well on TV today. If you take care with a product, it'll be good forever; which is why "The Cosby Mysteries" won't be fondly remembered 30 years from now. If ever.