cult film freak: TED DANSON IN 'ONCE UPON A SPY' WITH MARY-LOUISE WELLER

Title: ONCE UPON A SPY Year: 1980 Rating: ***1/2

One of those failed TV-pilots that becomes a standalone TV-movie, ONCE UPON A SPY takes the James Bond aesthetic to the small screen, from formidable (and colorful) technical set pieces to a flaunting trumpet score to a former Bond villain in Christopher Lee, a brilliant computer mogul who, brain-wise, is second to none...

Well except for Ted Danson, turning in one of those befuddled geeks who's really a handsome diamond-in-the rough/anti-leading-man types... and it's no surprise, given his near-future turn in CHEERS, he has great comedic timing...

Mary-Louise Weller in ONCE UPON A SPY

Perfectly paired with (and counterbalanced by) sublime ANIMAL HOUSE beauty Mary-Louise Weller, an Alpha Male-like female operative and, after getting Danson's Jack Chenault out of a stuffy office shared with his only friend, a computer the size of a wall, the action is pretty much non-stop...

So the peripheral world-dominating plot doesn't matter since it's the nifty Odd Couple... whether ripping around in a hot-rod on the ground or jumping out of planes in the air... that really matters, and this SPY would have made a genuinely good series (as the creators of REMINGTON STEELE would soon-after prove).