The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

I recently purchased an unofficial "Girl From U.N.C.L.E" DVD set and finally watched ALL the episodes . I must say I really liked it ! I definitely prefer it to Seasons 3 and 4 of the "Man From U.N.C.L.E" . MFU's Season 3 was a farce most of the time , and the attempts to get cheap laughs from the public through an unreasonable amount of slapstick comedy and childish jokes were so pathetic and over the top that most episodes from that phase of the show are hardly watchable . On the other hand in "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E" the tone is quite light , but the writers don't try to make the public laugh at any cost and at every moment and the jokes are usually funny . And the silly and campy touches are usually very original , more in "Get Smart" style rather than MFU style .

Season 4 of MFU wasn't as bad as the previous one as the producers themselves had realized that the show had sunk to abysmal depths and a return to darker storylines was in order . Yet , despite a few wonderful stories ( "The Deadly Quest Affair" in particular ) the show had become quite boring and lifeless , the spirit of the first two years was gone for good and , even if still a solid duo , Robert Vaughn and David McCallum weren't anymore the irresistible couple they used to be . I think I would have probably preferred if they had axed MFU after its third season instead of cancelling GFU . Actually this new show was fresher and could have probably worn both black and white ( two of my fave eps, "The Fountain of Youth and "the Double-o-Nothing Affair have actually a much darker tone ) , so I think they probably would have send here some of the best writers MFU had , like Dean Hargrove and Robert E.Thompson . After all "The Deadly Quest Affair" could have been rewritten as a GFU script involving April and Mark instead of Napoleon and Illya . I agree that something should have been done to improve this show , like being sure that the scripts would have been more constant in tone and quality and remembering to always give April more relevance than her partner etc.. but there is still a lot to like about GFU the way it is .

For years I have been skeptical to watch it imagining that it was horribly written , like some MFU purists think , but now I see that it isn't . I had also been led to believe that Stefanie did nothing else in the show apart form screaming and being recued by her partner , which clearly isn't the case .
I must say that the show was clearly a good vehicle for Stefanie and allowed her to showcase her talent , by speaking many languages , doing many different voices , playing many characters . And sometimes ( but not too often unfortunately ) she could show her atletic prowess .
Noel Harrison doesn't have much personality or charisma as an actor , but he's overall enjoyable as a supporting player to Stefanie .
Leo G.Carroll still rocks as Mr.Waverly .
And you can clearly see that the guest actors have always great fun with the over-the-top but thoroughly enjoyable roles they are given , think to Margaret Leighton , Broderick Crawford , Hermione Gingold , Raymond Massey , Gladys Cooper , John Carradine , Ann Sothern , Boris Karloff and many others .. And Gena Rowlands and Ed Asner give memorable performances in more serious eps .
Crawford and Carradine guest starred also in some later episodes of MFU and were given literally NOTHING to do and that was pretty much the same case of other acting greats , like Michael Rennie , Paul Lukas and another Crawford , the one and only Joan !

So I definitely give GFU thumbs up .