Robert Culp (1930-2010)
Robert Culp, American actor, died last week outside his home after falling. He was 79.
He is best remembered for partnering Bill Cosy in I Spy as a pair of American undercover spies. Cosby played a world class tennis player and Culp was his coach.
None of the reports that I read about his death mentioned one of his best, but little seen, movies, Turk 182. In that movie Culp plays the role of Mayor Tyler, the Mayor of New York, who is the subject of Timothy Hutton’s attempts to embarrass him politically through the use of graffiti. If you can get the movie anywhere, it’s worth a look. It also helped promote the popularity of graffiti, which is not an approving recommendation, only an observation.
The following is a scene from Get Smart (I loved that show) in which he plays the waiter…
“You’re axed, me lad.”
It was announced last week that The Bill has been cut by ITV, after 27 years on the air. Once the top rating show in Britain, its viewers had fallen from a healthy 7m to 3.5m. Attempts to revive the show with faster action and a later timeslot didn’t work, although in Australia the show still rates well and episodes will be seen until September.
Unlike most cop shows, The Bill showed ordinary situations and scenery, often dingy Council estates and depressed areas, in a realistic manner. Also unlike other cop shows, instead of focusing on one particular group of police, it showed the activities of all the police during one shift.
The following is a montage of pics from the show, plus the various opening themes..
Btw, the term The Bill is a shortening of The Old Bill, a slang term referring to the police. The exact origin of that term is unknown but the website for the UK metropolitan Police gives 13 possible derivations:
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