Imagine for a moment that James Bond had a permanent female partner, that the two of them appeared in a weekly TV series, and that the series was a comedy.
That's pretty much what you can expect from ABC's "Spy Game," which premieres Monday at 7 p.m. on Ch. 4.This is cloak-and-dagger adventure with its tongue firmly planted in cheek.
There isn't a show like "Spy Game" on TV anymore, but there used to be a lot of them. Shows like "The Avengers," "Wild, Wild West," "It Takes a Thief," "I Spy," "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Mission: Impossible."
"Spy Game" is brought to us by executive producer Sam Raimi, the man behind "Hercules" and "Xena." And he and his cohorts openly admit they were influenced by those earlier show.
Heck, Raimi and his fellow executive producer, John McNamara, weren't just influenced by them, the idolized them.
"We kept saying, `Kids today are so deprived. They don't have the really great, cool heroes that we grew up with,' " McNamara said.
And Raimi chimed in with a comment about how "thrilled" he was to meet Patrick McNee because his mother thought "The Avengers" were "the coolest of the cool."
(McNee and former "I Spy" star Robert Culp make cameo appearances in the "Spy Game" premiere.)
The premise for "Spy Game" updates the old East-vs.-West espionage battles that drove the plots of those '60s series. What with the end of the Cold War, there are a lot of out-of-work spies out there getting themselves into mischief. So a super-secret agency called E.C.H.O. (Emergency Counter Hostilities Organization) has been organized to fight all these highly trained spies who are now working for themselves - or for various evil bad guys.
E.C.H.O.'s top agent is a super-smart female, Max London (Allison Smith, who used to co-star as Allie's daughter on "Kate & Allie"). She recruits young-but-retired super agent Lorne Cash (Linden Ashby of "Mortal Kombat"), who reluctantly agrees to work for E.C.H.O. and even more reluctantly becomes Max's partner.
Monday's episode involves a plot to kill the president. Episode 2 involves the former head torturer for the KGB.
But the plots are actually immaterial. "Spy Game" is about cool cars, great gadgets, super stunts and martial arts combat. It's sort of a live-action cartoon.
(There's plenty of cartoonlike hand-to-hand combat, but little or no blood and mayhem. Parents of young children should, however, take note of the TV-PG rating.)
"Spy Game" isn't going to uplift or enlighten you. But it is entertaining in a mindless sort of way.