The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV Series) The Suburbia Affair (1967) User Reviews

Victor Borge guest stars.

[gordonl56 · 7/10 · 14 February 2015]

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. – The Suburbia Affair -1967

This is the 76th episode of 1964 to 1968 spy series, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. The series ran for a total of 105 episodes. The first season was filmed in black and with the remainder shot in colour. Robert Vaughn plays agent Napoleon Solo while David McCallum plays Illya Kuryakin. Leo G Carroll plays Mister Waverly, the boss of the secret agency known as U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law & Enforcement) UNCLE's main enemy is THRUSH, an organization out to take over the planet.

This one is also an improvement over the infamous "Gorilla Affair" episode. UNCLE agents Robert Vaughn and David McCallum move into a house in a new suburb. They are there to find a scientist who is in hiding in the area. The man has a formula for anti-matter. Needless to say your friendly neighbourhood villains, THRUSH, also want the formula.

Right after Vaughn and McCallum set up house THRUSH delivers a bomb disguised as a bottle of milk. The bomb bit is used again later in the episode disguised as a loaf of bread.

The scientist, Victor Borge, is using a cover as music teacher. In this episode the resident blonde type is played by, Beth Brickell. Of course she is friends with Borge and gets mixed up with the battle between UNCLE and THRUSH. Reta Shaw plays the local THRUSH boss who reminds one of a strict teacher. Richard Erdman has a good bit as a real-estate agent who gets grabbed up in error by THRUSH. Also with a good sized part here, is long time character player, King Moody.

Well everything comes to a head after a chase in ice cream trucks through the streets of the suburb. McCallum is captured along with Brickell, Borge and Erdman and locked in a basement. Vaughn does the mandatory rescue which results in fists and bullets being exchanged with the THRUSH bunch. Of course the good guys win.

A few decent laughs are had but I wish they had played the story straight.

King Moody, most might recall as KAOS agent, "Straker" in the great, GET SMART series. Starker was the aide to chief KAOS boss, "Siegfried" (Bernie Kopell)

Truly Great Scenes from Old Milk Trucks

[sonnyncherfan · 8/10 · 21 May 2006]

A little deep with the math and the hiding of a nuclear researcher in suburbia but funny too, with some amazing milk trucks and milk men, from the 60's when they delivered to your door. the chase scenes are pretty good and some people getting sick from fumes in the lights is an interesting spy twist~~ Good segment and so humanly typical of the "Man from U.N.C.L.E" team--like when the other throws out the bread thinking it is a bomb but the partner really ordered a loaf of rye...The lady is such a Leave it To Beaver type woman and that makes it so Brady-Bunchy. I think the older kids of today may have a few good laughs at some of these non-R type scenes. My 8 year-old would laugh and laugh at certain parts. The neighborhood looks an awful lot like the first neighborhood Sonny & Cher lived in before moving into Tony Curtis' place, according to the jackets of their LP's when they got their start: I had to wonder if there was any connection to this film location and them besides the fact that the joint episode on my VHS guest-stars Sonny & Cher, & is titled "The Hot Number Affair."

No peace in Peaceful Haven

[ShadeGrenade · 9/10 · 3 July 2009]

Scientist Dr.Lyman Rutter ( Victor Borge ) has invented a formula for anti-matter. Fearing his work will be misused, he goes into hiding. The only clue to his whereabouts is a letter he sent to a colleague in Vienna, postmarked 'Peaceful Haven'.

Solo and Kuryakin buy a house in the quiet suburban neighbourhood as part of their assignment. Almost immediately THRUSH try to kill them with a booby-trapped bottle of milk. "Good thing we did not have the cottage cheese!", quips Solo.

Dr.Rutter is living nearby, posing as piano teacher 'Mr.Willoughby'. When an real estate salesman called P.T. Barkley ( Richard Erdman ) is kidnapped in his place, he decides to give himself up...

Similar in premise ( if not content ) to 'The Prisoner' episode 'Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling'. Like Professor Seltzman, Dr.Rutter has gone to ground to protect his invention from evil-doers. The late Danish pianist/comedian Victor Borge is excellent as 'Rutter', a far cry from some of the hammy guest stars in other Season 3 stories. As THRUSH agent 'Miss Witherspoon', Reta Shaw is somewhat fearsome ( she puts me in mind of a music teacher I had at school ). Beth Brickell, who plays Solo and Illya's neighbour 'Betsy Watson', was a regular in Ivan Tors' children series 'Gentle Ben'. Herbert Anderson, who plays chemist 'Jonathan Fletcher', last appeared as 'Harry Barnman' in Season 1's 'The Shark Affair'.

One of the better Season 3 episodes. The sight of poor Illya cooking and cleaning is hilarious. When a loaf of bread is delivered to the house, he throws it into a bucket, thinking it to be a bomb. It isn't. David McCallum looks to be having difficulty keeping a straight face as Vaughn fishes out the soggy slices.

Richard Erdman's 'P.T. Barkley' gets his fair share of laughs too. Showing a house to a couple, he gushes: "Think of it as an adventure in serenity!" to which the man replies: "We want a house, not a cemetery!".

Anti-matter has been in the news recently, with the activation of the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, giving this episode a relevance it lacked in 1967.

Nice action bit with a fake ice cream seller armed with lollipop hand-grenades! So yes this is daft but extremely likable. Hard to believe that one of the writers - Stanford Sherman - was also responsible for the dreadful 'The Super-Colossal Affair' ( probably written when he was not feeling well ).

FILMED IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD

[DavidRaddonCarter · 10/10 · 14 December 2021]

This episode was filmed in the Porter Ranch are of the San Fernando Valley. My family moved into our newly built home in November of 1965. I can't recall the specific dates as I was only 7 in January of '66, my memory is that the filming took place in the early spring of '66. I remember all the neighborhood kids running over to Chatsworth St. To watch one of the Ice Crean Truck scenes. I recently purchased the series on DVD, and I plan on studying this episode with a keen eye. What you see in the episode is a very recently developed housing tract, and you can see none of the yards in the chase scenes have any foliage or grass in the front yards. Yet. I sometimes drive through my old neighborhood, and marvel at how big the trees that were so young and small when I was living there (we lived in this house from 1965-1978), are now mature and HUGE ! This episode is a cool one to watch for me on a very pleasurable trip down memory lane. Loved this show !!

Granny Goodness in the Suburbs

[profh-1 · 5/10 · 5 January 2023]

A scientist has gone into hiding for 10 years, fearng his discovery will be put to terrible use by the wrong people. Both UNCLE and Thrush are after him, and have infiltrated a recently-built suburban tract to figure out which of its residents is living there under an assumed name. The foul-tempered and intimidating "Miss Witherspoon" is using a method involving altering light frequency to drive the locals slightly mad, hoping it will flush their quarry, who suffers from a very rare medical condition, when he tries to get a very rare drug to deal with it. Unfortunately, the local pharmacist is one of the bad guys.

Robert Vaughn is his usual charming, unflappable self throughout this rather dodgy story, one that could have been a lot better if played just a wee bit more serious. More than ever, one thing that's clear watching this is that Napoleon Solo & Ilya Kuryakin are NOT friends, and really don't like each other. Even John Steed & Cathy Gale got along better than these two.

Writer Sheridan Gibney, who once won two separate Academy Awards for one movie about Louis Pasteur, had to have been the one who came up with this story about a scientist concerned for humanity. Sadly, Stanford Sherman, one of the worst writers on both UNCLE and BATMAN, worked on the screenplay. Maybe he'd have been more at home as a milkman or a breadman (seriously, WHO has JUST bread delivered to their house?).

Victor Borge plays the scientist-in-hiding, and his performance is very much on the same keen level as Vaughn's. The rest of the cast, however, seem to have stepped right off a 60s sitcom, including Herbert Anderson (Dennis The Menace's father), Ray Kellogg (forever typecast as policemen), King Moody (Siegfried's idiot sidekick "Shtarker" on GET SMART), Richard Erdman as "P. T. Barkley"-- some name (I can imagine if this had been made 15 years later, Frank Bonner playing the salesman). Beth Brickell is very sweet as "Betsy Wilson", the "innocent" caught up in all this. (She switched over to producing & directing later on.)

And then there's Reta Shaw, who did this in between MARY POPPINS and THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. With a face like a brick wall and a personality to match, she always seems to be playing these very aggressive, bossy women, but here she turns it up to "11". A few years later, comics legend Jack Kirby modelled his character "Granny Goodness" on her, and I can't think of anything I've ever seen her in where she was more like "Granny" than in this episode!

You know, in the book on this show, it was mentioned how censors inspired the producers to replace regular guns with "stun guns"... but apart from one or two instances in the 1st season, I haven't been seeing those at all. Both UNCLE and Thrush agents are shooting (and sometimes killing) people in this story like crazy, and they're definitely using REAL bullets. At one point, 2 cops are called about a break-in, but you'd think they'd have showed up a lot sooner with all the gunfire going on!