SPY GAME REVIEWS PAGE

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Here are just a couple of reviews (that I had access to) on the premier of SPY GAME. {These are purely the views of the authors of each article, and for the most part, I do not agree with any of them!}

The Hollywood Reporter: Monday, March 3, 1997
"Spy Game", by Irv Letofsky

Pity the poor producers who dabble in spying after the Cold War. "Spy Game," a new short-run and amusing comedy-fantasy-action series from ABC, has that much belabored plot - featuring down-sized intelligence folks run amok.
The president starts another up-tech secret agency (aren't there a lot of those around lately?), this one is called E.C.H.O., for Emergency Counter Hostilities Organization, to save us from danger.
The questionis - what dangers? Not the Russians or the Iranians. The Republican Congress? The Medfly?
Series creators John McNamara, Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi likely set out to have some fun, including high kicks and spectacular stunts. Their superfolk, Lorne Cash (Linden Ashby) and Max for Maxine London (Allison Smith), can fight fiercly with hands, feet and elbows. And though bashed in the face a few times, they never bleed. Lorne's former partner and buddy, Adam Quill (Cotter Smith), has turned disgruntled and diabolical. So Lorne and Max must stop him from killing the president. (Rest easy, they stop him. A lot of people are killed, but no blood is spilled.)
Sam Raimi has claimed perposterous as his own genre (consider "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess"). This This is wacky for sure, but the execution is terribly wanting. And while attitude is supposed to be the charm here, McNamara's script is mostly witless.

Daily Variety: Monday, March 3, 1997
"Spy Game", by Tony Scott

With cameos by retired TV spy series reps, "Spy Game" establishes a Crayola-bright series opening with reminders of "The Avengers," "Mission: Impossible" and "I Spy," but comparisons screech to a halt there. Loud, unoriginal and unimaginative pilot isn't sophisticated enough for preteens; it should have been animated.
Concept crowds around ECHO (Emergency Counter Hostilities Org), which has drawn in most of the world's out-of-work agents, who apparently aren't eligible for unemployment insurance.
Led by dour bureau cheif Micah Simms (Bruce McCarty), the take off never does take off. Adam Quill (Cotter Smith), who thinks the president was wrong in scrapping spy orgs, has his own agenda. Veteran Lorne Cash (Linden Ashby), originally trained by master op Quill, joins ECHO and is assigned, to his chagrin, to work second banana to new agent Max London (Allison Smith), whose qualifications are deliberately vague.
ECHO's aim is to kayo the enemies within, and the company boasts hardware to unnerve any opponent. London, whose talents behind a driving wheel verge on maniacal, and Cash are after a small demonic device that, floating, can deliver a cylinder with all the devilishness of a minor hydrogen bomb.
Quill opens the proceedings when he grabs a live bomb and runs into a shack that explodes around him. But instead of going up in pieces, he goes on to run an outfit of disgruntled ex-spies who want to deliver the powerful mechanism to the president for putting them on the dole.
The tricks, the gadgets, the unsurprising surprises (a tired plastic skin mask elicits a "Not this again!" from Cash) can't carry the pilot, and acting by Ashby and Smith is bland. These spies are into coreographed fights with other agents, including that Russian operator Shank (Keith Szarabajka), who's now on the ECHO team.
Elodie Keene's direction is, to say the least, derivative, and Christopher Beck's blatant score, a bangingly failed reminder of the "Mission: Impossible" theme, shows how Lalo Schifrin's work so individualistically punctuated that eralier series. As for the disarming insouciance of the Robert Culp-Bill Cosby "I Spy" high adventures, there's no echo.
John McNamara's contrived script (he co-created the series with Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi) and Vincent J. Cresciman's production design, which sticks mostly to backlot explorations, proclaim how shrewdly and professionally the three aforementioned series were devised.
Opening credits sequence, a hokey takeoff on "The Avengers," involves Ashby and Max armed and striking poses before show's title spelled out in oversize letters. That's as close as the opening sesh gets to the stylish and persuasive "Avengers." Patrick MacNee's opening line, referring to previous TV spy adventures, says it all: "No doubt about it, Quill, we were the best!"
Will it go? There's a considerable difference between charming tongue-in-cheek and foot in mouth.

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The Los Angeles Times: Monday, March 3, 1997
"'Spy Game' Struggles to Carry Out Its Mission" by: Howard Rosenberg

Rarely has there been a more derived series than ABC's new "Spy Game"
The opening credits recall "The Avengers," that grand escapist and inventive British series that ran on ABC in the 1960s. The premise - the United States needing protection from former Cold War agents resentful about being downsized - echoes the 1996 movie remake of TV's "Mission: Impossible." And the friendly bickering between male protagonist Lorne Cash (Linden Ashby) and female protagonist Max London (Allison Smith) is classic "Remington Steele," an NBC series from the 1980s that itself sought to reinvent "The Thin Man."
Enough of the name dropping, though, for no one will be imitating "Spy Game," which doesn't even approach any of the above series. Instead it is really bad television on just about every level. That is surprising if for no other reason than one of the show's creators , along with Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi, is John McNamara, who was also co-creator of the highly original "Profit," which had a fleeting run on Fox last season.
The brain center of "Spy Game" is E.C.H.O., a government agency created to protect the United States from these dangerous renegades from within. Its success or failure rests on London and former CIA agent Lorne Cash (who carries no weapon because he is a weapon) and their boss, Micah Simms (Bruce McCarty).
Unfortunately for the series, its own success or failure rests largely on the work of Ashby, a wooden Ken doll, and Smith, who also has memorable looks but simply can not act a whit.
The threat in the premier comes not only from London's bridges falling down but also from Cash's demented former mentor and colleague Adam Quill (Cotter Smith), who controls a super weapon known as the eradicator that he hopes to use on the president. Never mind that none of the principals here looks like he or she has ever come into contact with anything more technologically advanced than a blow dryer.
"Spy Game" is rather violent and lacks the talent to execute the occasional witty lines that surface in the initaial episodes. These stories include appearances by "Profit" alumnus Keith Szarabajka, as a former Soviet agent, and a brief early cameo tonight by Patrick MacNee. The latter evokes memories of MacNee with Diana Rigg, with superior skills and scripts, carrying off this brand of cheeky adventure so stylishly on "The Avengers."
While watching "Spy Game" plod, meanwhile, you can think of good use for the eradicator.

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TV Guide: Week of Monday, March 3, 1997
"Rating the Midseason Shows" by: Susan Stewart

SPY GAME (Mon., ABC) TV-PG Ever wonder what happened to spies when the Cold War ended? They went into comedy. This series, from the producers of Hercules and Xena, stars Linden Ashby and Allison Smith as a couple of cute ex-espionage agents charged with keeping the world safe from their cranky, downsized counterparts. Game's a spoof, reminiscent of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. This is low maintenence entertainment, rife with campy jokes and cleverly coreographed battles. My score (0-10): 6

T.V. Guide: Saturday, March 15, 1997.
"The Couch Critic" By: Jeff Jarvis

Spy Game
ABC, Mondays, 8 P.M./ET

Amazing how a good idea can turn bad so quickly. I'd love to see a new spy show now, even as the espionage trade is being downsized in the new world economy. Nowadays, spies are about as necessary as keypunch operators. Yet spies do know - literally - where the bodies are buried. They're still dangerous and devious. Take these ferrety characters, arm them with techy weapons, give them great plots or punch lines, and sic them on a genetic enemy, like The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s THRUSH, and you should have a blast. Should.
In the first minute of Spy Game, I hoped this would be such a show: a Get Smart for the millennium. In a brilliant job of guest-star casting, Patrick Macnee, the legendary spy-star of The Avengers, appears as a retired spook playing golf. Suddenly, a mis-swung club flies into a tree and uncovers a camouflaged sniper. Macnee and his playmates attack him with their putters and win the round. The scene is outrageous and funny. It's also, apparently, an impossible act to follow; from the next minute on, Spy Game becomes an intense bore.
The series stars Linden Ashby as ex-CIA agent Lorne Cash and Allison Smith as Max London, his beautiful, daring partner: his agent 99. She has concrete nerves. One way into the headquarters of their secret new spy agency, E.C.H.O. (Emergency Counter Hostilities Organization), is to drive down a blind alley at over 100 mph, strait for a brick wall that opens at the last minute. She's driving; she's cool. He's not. She's the real spy geek, the one who gets sweaty playing with new guns that shoot bullets, gas pellets, even mini-missiles. They're a good team, well armed with neat toys. But they're sent on missions with no backup from the lousy writers and directors at HQ. They get bad lines and worse plots, set to a dorky mockery of '60s spy-flick music (like the "In Like Flint" theme reinterpreted for elevators).
After our spies lament how unwanted they are - "No more East, no more West, no more big rooms full of cool stuff" - they're sent to nab a bitter ex-agent trying to kill the president or to rescue a Russian ex-spy's mom who's being held hostage to get her son to perform some dastardly act. This should be cause for campy humor, clever repartee about the state of the world, or at least nail-biting chases. Instead, we get lines that fill air: As they try to jump onto a moving jet, one spy screams to the other to close the hatch; he asks where the handle is; she says, "That would be the thing that says 'handle.' " See: The writers aren't even trying. That's because all of this is just a thin excuse for gratuitous violence - way too many karate chops for one show, especially one in the family hour. It's stupid to produce such senseless violence at a time when TV is being attacked (unfairly, I usually say) as a violent medium. It's not only dumb, it's dull.
Oh well, I guess they just don't make spies like they used to.