I Spy now on YouTube

YouTube recently cut a deal with Hollywood studios that is enabling complete episodes of some old TV shows to be on YouTube. One of the shows is I Spy, the groundbreaking 1965-1968 series that featured white and black agents paired together. It also helped make a star of Bill Cosby.

So far, only five episodes of the first season are on YouTube. Also, YouTube appears to have decided to not permit the episodes to be embedded on Web site. In any event, the episodes available (and we’re linking them via their titles) are as follows:

So Long Patrick Henry: Agents Kelly Robinson (Robert Culp) and Alexander Scott (Bill Cosby) are to present defected athlete Leroy Browne (Ivan Dixon) a chance to regain his U.S. citizenship. Written by Culp, this was the first episode broadcast but it’s not the pilot. Directed by Leo Penn, son father of actor Sean. Composer Earle Hagen actually incorporates The James Bond Theme (rather effectively) in the epilogue.

A Cup of Kindness: Russ Conley, Kelly’s old teacher in spy school, shows up in Hong Kong and gives Kelly and Scott an envelope. The contents, once decoded, are instructions saying Conley’s a double agent and has to be killed. Written by series creators Morton Fine and David Friedkin, with Friedkin playing Conley.

Carry Me Back to Old Tsing-Tao . A Chinese criminal wants to return to his home on Taiwan (called Formosa here). The U.S. will permit him to do so IF he makes good on $1 million in back taxes. The problem: the criminal has three badass sons-in-law (Bernard Fox, David Sheiner and Michael Conrad) who want the money for themselves.

Chrysanthemum . Composer Hagen incorporates a tune he originally wrote in the 1940s and which he’d revive in the 1980s for a Mike Hammer series starring Stacy Keach.

Dragon’s Teeth. Kelly runs into an old flame while on assignment. Don’t be surprised if it turns out badly.