I really love this series as it is clever and well thought out. Each episode has a mission that is seemingly impossible and Jim has to make up his team and work out how best to complete it. The plots are clever and imaginative and there is always a sense of danger just round the corner. I particularly like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain - they make up an excellent pair. Very enjoyable indeed.

I was in high school when this series came out. I found it extremely dragged out and boring so I only watched a few episodes until now. I have since bought the entire series and have watched every show.Everyone thought this was a spy thriller series. James Bond was a big hit at the time. But there is nothing "Spy" associated with this show. This show turned into a group of Scam artists as the IMF team who stole money, kidnapped & tortured people, lied, falsely arrested, impersonated authorities and deprived their targets of their constitutional & human rights. The audience began rooting for the bad guys because the supposed good guys were so rotten, setting up people to be killed, blatantly abusing authority and smiling at their own cold blooded acts of violence. The only saving grace was the intro format of the instructions and the technology and cosmetic expertise. But even the taped directives are left in ridiculous, unsecured locations.The first 4 seasons, all of the shows were either Nazi organizations trying to rebuild the Nazi regime or some nameless East European or UPC gov't seeking world domination or WMD or some nameless Hispanic country with dictators & internal rebellions or drug cartels.Season 5 turned into a ridiculous hippy protest season. They hired Lesley Ann Warren who clearly fit the role of a hippy. She was a terrible actress with a deadpan expression and no discernible acting skills; lacking any class or beauty for the role. Fortunately, they stopped these Atypical violent hippy protest themes after season 5. Unfortunately, they exchanged hippy for mafia.Seasons 6 and 7 were nearly all syndicate and mafia episodes with IMF team stealing from the syndicate and setting them against each other. There were multiple casino and gambling story lines, drugs and stealing money from their vaults in at least a dozen different episodes. The IMF team even resorted to drugging and hypnotizing victims to commit crimes or setting them up to believe they had killed or committed a crime as in "Crackup". The only bright side of these last two seasons was the addition of Lynda Day George to the cast, until she poorly chose season 7 to have a child.There were few impersonations after season 4. They used their own faces for 6 & 7. The idea that no one would notice substitutions without cosmetic alterations was too absurd to be believable. Season 6 & 7 technology consisted of transmitter tone boxes and a phone number translator. Mostly just scams, lies, stealing, kidnapping, false arrests and elaborate hoaxes. The MI scam team were quite cold blooded about getting their targets killed. The things they did to the "bad guys" was so awful and hateful and totally in contradiction with constitutional rights, that the audience was sympathizing with the criminals. Phelps role became cold blooded, hateful and merciless exceeding any criminality of the targets. Willy also became cruel & cold blooded and their female counterpart would do a spine chilling grin as they heard one of their targets being shot.Most of the scenes were overly long, drawn out and boring. Especially those "pursuit" scenes which spent nearly 5 minutes watching someone run, crawl, drive or swim from point A to B. There was an episode "Ultimatum" where Phelps acting as a thief on the run was holding a scientist hostage with less than 2 hours to disarm a nuclear bomb in LA. It made no sense as Phelps deliberately delayed the scientist from disarming the bomb until the last minute.There were also too many duplicate stories with Casino, Chess matches, breaking into vaults, Syndicates, kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, drugging & stealing themes, etc.Of the entire series, there were only a half dozen truly fresh stories. But even those were laced with cruelty such as "Two Thousand". "Crack up" was one where they tormented the victim into believing he had committed murders.The loss of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain after the 3rd season really hurt the show. Clearly, the show producers failed to honor the actor's contracts such as Landau's guarantee that no other actor's salary should be higher than his or Hill's contract which stated he would never work past the Sabbath which is very important for his Jewish religion with strict rules about being at home before dusk on Friday for this weekly observance. When the actors complained, their careers suffered from being blackballed.Greg Morris actually carried the entire series as the genius engineer. He was very likable as the technology genius until the last two seasons where his role changed from hiding in false file cabinets, under cars or in some HVAC duct using impressive technologies to impersonating a variety of nationalities, police officers, thugs, pilots, doctors, etc. While it gave him a chance to show off his skills as an actor and the variety of colorful personalities he could provide, his attitude in these roles became very snide and quite unlikeable. Where his genius key role was an opportunity seldom available to ethnics in a prime time series of that era, the last two seasons served to undo the achievements accomplished by degrading his likable character into a stereotype tough hood attitude for the final 2 seasons.While I love the cast of Star Trek, I found it very disturbing to see Nimoy (Spock) with these scary grins and bizarre roles or Shatner as a mafia kingpin.Most of these reviewers are remembering the recorded directives, impersonations and technology with some impressive trickery, particularly in the first 4 seasons, but have not seen the show recently.I recommend rewatching all 7 seasons. It should have been a spy series. Not a bunch of scammers, thieves, kidnappers and cold blooded liars. If you rewatch the series, you will see how much different it was from what you remember 45 years ago.

Weren't the 60's great for escapist entertainment? I mean on both sides of the Atlantic. Here in the UK we had "The Avengers", "Department S", "The Champions" and many others from the ITC stable, while imported from the States we had "Star Trek", "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and this, perhaps my most favourite.Blame it on the delectable Barbara Bain as agent Cinammon Carter, or on the best TV theme tune ever, but most of all blame it on the ingenious plotting and cohesive acting of the whole cast.I take great pleasure from being able to re-watch such great TV from my childhood in the here and now and spend more time watching re-runs of classic series like this than from most current TV.Mission accomplished!

I know Mission Impossible is one of the best loved adventure series of all time, so I'm sure not giving this show a perfect 10 will turn many off. I would always find it on in my house weekly as I was growing up. Who could forget as a young kid that slow burn fuse introduction? I don't actually remember any one episode from my childhood days (unlike many other shows like Star Trek and Get Smart where I do remember from watching when they originally aired), maybe it was shown at a later time when I was going into semi-sleepy time land, I remember only that they would use cool gadgets and do the ultimate double cross in the end, ......and no IM team members would die. The show as forward looking as it was, was dated by the constraints of 1960's TV styles, in that none of the primary actors were ever killed. That along with the many seasons it lasted produced many episodes doing the same thing, or worse yet, the IM team would be chasing after "bad-guys" that did not rise to the IM team's urgency level. I got a set of all the episodes and have randomly been re-watching them (I of course also watched the series in reruns over the decades because I am a fan). You can randomly watch the series since there is no continuum character development from show to show, another drawback. The biggest thing that struck me after recently watching three episodes is this: The best episodes are when they are against the Red's, or a rogue nuclear dictatorship, thats really where this kind of team's creation is based upon. The worst episodes are when they are going after drug dealers or embezzlers or the mafia. Although they are entertaining, you may ask yourself (and it took me 30 years to get to this stage so you may not ask yourself), why couldn't they have just called the police? Still a great show, if you get the DVD's it's best to look at the story lines and start off with the international black ops episodes and hold off on the domestic mob/drug dealer/charity embezzler/tax cheat/etc etc ones. Mission Impossible had a formula so that if you are in the mood for good guy USA wins every time with no good guys killed ever, you can't go wrong thats what you'll get. 7 of 10. Another series you may want to try thats played more so with comedy but still has some dramatic tension is It Takes A Thief, not saying that it comes close to Mission Impossible but it's rarely shown and may actually be fresher to watch then this series which has been played out since it first ran 40 years ago. Also, Danger Man (AKA Secret Agent) the British 1960's spy show had some seriously good episodes with a lot of realistic dramatic tension and highly recommended when your looking for a similar Mission Impossible fix.