Decoy a one-season undercover cop show from 1957-58, was unknown to this reviewer until it turned up in our unwanted screener pile. Because it starred cult actress Beverly Garland I was moderately curious to see it, only to discover that it's an unusual, even groundbreaking series of exceptional interest.

For starters, it was the first - and still among the very few - American cop show with a female protagonist. One would imagine that, Decoy coming from the 1950s, that a male co-star would have been required to do all the heavy lifting, to sweep in and save the day, but such is not the case at all.

In 1957, most television production was shifting to Hollywood, but Decoy was filmed entirely in New York City. Possibly owing to the fact that Garland was not quite a star, there are innumerable "stolen" shots of her filmed all over the city, from major landmarks to virtually unrec...Read the entire review

The Series:

Created by Stan Burns and Mike Marmer , Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp originally aired on ABC on Saturday morning's from September 1970 through to September 1972. A truly bizarre show, the series' concept was basically to take Get Smart (a series that Burns and Marmer had both worked on as writers) and basically do the same thing - except with chimpanzees in place of human actors. Not animated chimpanzees, mind you, but real flesh and blood critters. In short, this is a comedic series about monkey secret agents battling monkey bad guys, with periodic breaks for musical interludes in which the monkey cast members play rock 'n' roll music as a band called 'The Evolution Revolution.'

At any rate, the titular chimp works for an agency called The Agency To Prevent Evil (or A.P.E. for short) and reports to Commander Darwin, the main chimp in charge. He and his cohor...Read the entire review