Mission Impossible and Man from UNCLE Cold War Review

When I was a child, nuclear war was a big deal. The Cold War was at its height. Bob Hope in a NATO commercial warned, “If NATO wasn’t here, maybe we wouldn’t be either.” I had no idea what NATO was, but I remember the egg being thrown at the wall and splattering. I watched Mission Impossible and The Man from UNCLE. The first show, with its self-destructing audio tape and match being lit, felt serious and procedural. The second show was campy, goofy and fun to watch. Mission Impossible was an team action spectacle, and UNCLE was a comic buddy series.

Spies and gadgets were everywhere. Important people were saving the world behind closed doors. These were spy fantasies to relieve nuclear anxiety. The bad guys, like THRUSH, were ultimately defeated. Cold War popular culture in the sixties became a pressure valve for Armageddon anxieties. International peace seemed possible as long as the good guys were doing their secret operations.

But the fantasies got zanier. I SPY showcased tennis pros acting as secret agents.

James Bond portrayed a luxurious spook nirvana.

Even Dr. Strangelove made fun of nuclear annihilation. Little was discussed about the American military-industrial complex and its increasing power and profits. When the Cold War ended, these spy shows lost most of their relevance. The new political vacuum was no longer about nuclear existential terror. It was replaced by a strange ambient dread about, well everything. Fear about supply chains and migration corridors increased as the planet slowly de-globalized. Climate change replaced nuclear war, but it remained hopelessly abstract. Terrorism didn’t quite fill the gap. We had entered a new world hiding civilizational collapse, famine, and potential regional nuclear wars. While the media hopelessly fragmented. Entertainment became disposable. Bob Hope would have been very confused today, but, you can still watch Mission Impossible and The Man from UNCLE on Youtube for nostalgic comfort.