THE INNOCENT: Glenn Corbett as Bernie Oren, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War travelling through Asia who stumbles upon criminal doings in Hong Kong. UNCLE asks him to pose as a dead smuggler's partner, and though he's happy to take their money, he's more interested in Heavenly Cortelle, an exotic beauty who seems to be working with the bad guys, but also spies on them. UNCLE has really created a monster, here, and Bernie is soon going off-book and doing his own thing, the problem with recruiting an action man rather than the usual homemaker. Corbett started his career in showbiz as a model, but soon went into film and television with middling success. He was co-lead in his first film, The Crimson Kimono, and TV seemed more his speed, scoring longer-lasting parts in It's a Man's World, Route 66 and The Road West in the 60s. This is also when he played Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive, in an episode of Star Trek. In the 70s, he would star in 450+ episodes of the soap The Doctors, and then be offered a recurring gig on Dallas. He died in 1993.
REVIEW: The Hong Kong Shilling Affair has everything required of a truly great Man from UNCLE episode, but it falls short of that because it pushes the comedy a bit too far. The fights tend to be a little silly, when you don't really need to push the absurdity when you've got Richard Kiel right there as a giant henchman - the visual is enough - but it's the characters' motivations that really keep us from taking the stakes seriously. Glenn Corbett gives a likable, but slightly goofy performance as Bernie Oren, a man scripted to fall in love with a woman who, thankfully, turns out to be an undercover cop, and she with him, despite never sharing any kind of romantic scenes. She's the only competent cop on show, as all the others are dumb as rocks and, indeed, appear corrupt in their inefficiency. The big bad, Apricot, a mystery woman who communicates through a Samurai statue (we're mixing cultures here) and wears a metal mask still gets caught out because her purse is so distinctive. And even our heroes are a little weird, Solo playing his nervous dandy persona for a second there, but it doesn't connect to anything, and Illya doing quacking Donald Duck noises (the geese as alarm system is a fun idea, but Solo doesn't even act like he's been rumbled - if these were Canadian geese, he'd have been taken to hospital). The playful direction also gives us silent moments where the actors mug at the camera with exaggerated expressions... Everything is just a little too silly, right down to ONCE AGAIN disabling a character by taking their trousers away (no really, what is up with that?).
And it's too bad, because look at what's here otherwise. We've got Gavin Macleod as an unctuous auctioneer who trades in state secrets and a host of buyers who could all have been villains in future episodes. An impressive superstrong henchman who violently throws his opponents against walls, or into a bin where a garbage truck grabs them and dumps them in the bay (not a good look for Hong Kong, but production-wise). Indeed, Hong Kong is well-realized on the same watery bit the show is always using, with lots of stock footage to establish the location. While Solo doesn't do too well - a woman with clicky heels stealths up on him, he gets snared into a net, etc. - Illya plays disguise artist to Mission: Impossible levels. We can raise an eyebrow or two at his Chinese accent, or his rubber make-up as a Mongolian warlord (with an electronically-disguised voice that doesn't work because he just sounds like Illya on a speaker), but the episode always uses Asian actors to play Asian characters at least (even if Heavenly is styled in Chinese fashion). Really, it's the police sergeant's "British" accent that's the real fail.
So with all these superspy elements imbedded in the episode, it really should work better than it does. In the end, Bernie and Heavenly fall through a skylight (indeed, Corbett injured himself in this sequence and his character is invisible, supposedly on the floor after that) and interrupt the villains. And then Apricot shows up (when, before, she was loath to appear in person to keep even her gender a secret) and it turns out the MacGuffin was in her purse all along, because the smuggler paid her boatwoman persona with it by mistake. Why is everyone so dumb in this one? I'm not even sure I understand the MacGuffin. I expected the coin to hold a microdot or something, but Macleod explains it's made of adamantium (or something) of the type used on the tips of American missiles, and what, the highest bidder could replicate such an alloy if they had this tiny sample?
HEARD ON CHANNEL D: "Seems like rather a small price to pay for a man's life." "Any price, Mr. Solo, is a small price for a man's life." (Solo and Waverly)
BONDED: Jaws himself, Richard Kiel, plays the giant henchman Merry; his Bond villain was featured in both The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Heavenly Cortelle is a Bond girl name if there ever was one on this show. Notably, it's Bernie who gets the girl in Bond fashion at the end of the episode, not Solo, smooching on the babe on the floor as the mission wraps. Hong Kong is a recurring setting in Bond films, including You Only Live Twice, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Die Another Day.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Great guest stars and an evocative setting, but it's led astray by comedy stylings and lame-brained motivations.
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