The Wild, Wild West

I was five when The Wild, Wild West debuted on CBS in 1965, and never watched it. My wife, who was a much more worldly seven then, remembers it as one of her favourite shows.

The first season (of four, and the only one in black and white) is just out on DVD, and we bought and watched the first episode tonight. Pacing was very slow by modern standards, but the whole thing was quite stylish. It was great seeing so many of my favourite character actors as guest stars: James Gregory (Dr. Tristan Adams from Star Trek's "Dagger of the Mind"); Nehemiah Persoff (endless character roles on everything from The Time Tunnel and The Six Million Dollar Man to The Facts of Life); Victor Buono (Batman's King Tut); and Suzanne Pleshette (Emily on the old Bob Newhart Show).

Of course, as a sign of the times, Persoff -- born in Jerusalem -- plays a Mexican, and Buono -- a white guy -- plays a Chinese. Although, in fairness -- and intriguingly presaging Buono's role as a mutant in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the episode ends with him pulling off a face mask to reveal ... that he's Hispanic!

Speaking of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, five years later Gregory and Buono would appear together in that film, the former as gorilla general Ursus, the latter as -- and, yes, this is the character's official name -- "Fat Man." However, they probably never even met when doing Wild, Wild West, since they had no scenes together (Gregory -- also known as Inspector Luger from Barney Miller -- has a scenery-chomping bit as Ulysses S. Grant at the beginning of the episode).

Anyway, it was thoroughly enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to watching more episodes. The next one has guest stars BarBara Luna (Captain's Woman Marlena Moreau from Trek's "Mirror, Mirror"), and J.D. Cannon (chief of detectives Peter B. Clifford from McCloud, one of my favourite series from the 1970s).

And of course, it's interesting knowing that we're seeing these digitally remastered episodes on our 50" TV looking much better than anyone saw them when they first aired 41 years ago ...