I SPY arrived in the wake of Bond, and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E's first blush of success (I don't believe that THE AVENGERS or SECRET AGENT had quite made it to the U.S., but they soon would), and while Cicely Tyson had already taken a leading non-domestic role in EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE, that series was less of a success than I SPY was. I SPY may not've had the first "interracial" kiss on U.S. television, but it certainly beat STAR TREK's much-bruited non-kiss (between William Shatner and Nichelle Nicholls's characters, and more of a pressing faces together) by several years, with the numerous appearances of France Nuyen as Sam, Robert Culp's Kelly's great love (apparently, Nuyen and Culp were an item off screen for a while; amusingly, Nuyen and Shatner may've kissed ((I don't remember clearly)) on her one STAR TREK appearance, which followed by nearly a decade Nuyen and Shatner's appearance together in the stage version of THE WORLD OF SUSIE WONG, wherein, as Nuyen told LIFE magazine, Shatner often "needed" ((sic)) a preshow massage from her). The emphasis on East-Asian settings in the first season particularly was canny, if also ethically arguable--surely Cosby would appear particularly All-American to even the most nervous viewers in distinction to these Other people, however often they were played by just as All-American actors. The politics in other ways were often simpleminded, particularly when compared to even SECRET AGENT, but the human drama was also at times remarkably present even given the flimsiness of the scripts, as noted here by others.
Review of I Spy
