Thursday Movie Picks #211: Spies (TV edition)

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. Since were at the last Thursday of the month, it's time for another TV edition, with the subject for this month being spies. I was able to come up with two classics and one that's probably not so well-remembered today:



Mission: Impossible (1966-1973). A group of secret agents for a multinational spy agency fight evil foreign powers and crime lords. Peter Graves was the leader for the final six seasons, replacing Steven Hill, who left the show after the first season because they couldn't fit the production schedule around his being an observant Orthodox Jew who wouldn't work on Shabbat. The series spawned a TV reboot in the 80s and then a whole bunch of Tom Cruise movies, with another one coming out this summer. It's also known for its memorable theme by Lalo Schifrin.



Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-1987). Mrs. King (Kate Jackson) got inadvertently involved with secret agent Scarecrow (Bruce Boxleitner) in one of those movie-type plot twists reminiscent of The Man Who Knew Too Much where a dying spy gives James Stewart a key piece of information. Except that Scarecrow doesn't die, and Mrs. King gets sucked up into the mystery so much that she winds up working for the agency.



MacGyver (1985-1992). Richard Dean Anderson plays Angus MacGyver, a spy known for his ingenuity at escaping from difficult situations by doing things like making an ultralite plane out of a roll of duct tape and some bubble gum. Well, I'm exaggerating, but the ingenuity was a big part of the series' appeal. MacGyver somehow wound up being a surprisingly big reference in later pop culture, notably with Marge Simpson's sisters Selma and Patty watching the show every day. Richard Dean Anderson would later go on to do a guest appearance on The Simpsons. This one also got a TV reboot.