Modesty Blaise

USA 1982
produced by
Barney Rosenzweig for Paramount/ABC
directed by Reza Badiyi
starring Ann Turkel, Lewis Van Bergen, Sarah Rush, Charles Cioffi, Carolyn Seymour, Keene Curtis, Sam Shimono, Douglas Dirkson, Hector Elias, Jan Van Reenen, Toru Tanaka, Pearl Shear, Leonard Bremen, Jeff Chayette, Richard Marion, Larry Vigus
written by Stephen Zito, based on characters created by Peter O'Donnell, music by Paul Zaza, Kevin Knelman

TV-pilot
Modesty Blaise

review by
Mike Haberfelner

When Modesty Blaise (Ann Turkel) and her sidekick Willie (Lewis Van Bergen) witness young Emma (Sarah Rush) being in trouble, they immediately save her from the hands of the baddies and decide to help her. Turns out she's a young computer genius who has developed a very powerful computer program that can ... do something (hey, this was 1982, nobody had any ideas what these new-fangled computers were actually capable of). Problem is, her computer has been stolen, and her lover Leo (Charles Cioffi), an economist with a basic idea of the program, has been kidnapped ... now of course, Leo hasn't really been kidnapped but has joined forces with Debbie (Carolyn Seymour), the baddie of the piece, and they are currently located in a remote hacienda in Mexico from where they plan to take over the New York Stock Exchange via this computer-thingie. It seems they know exatcly what to do, still they want to kidnap Emma.

Modesty and Willie want to put a stop to Debbie and Leo's nefarious plans, so they make a trip to Mexico, and take Emma with them for no reason whatsoever ... of course they are captured, but Debbie's guards are stupid enough to fall for the oldest trick in the book, and soon enough, Modesty and Willie manage to arm themselves to the teeth, shoot all of Debbie's men, and ... storm the computer room - where Debbie and Leo have already put the program into action and pretty much have the stock exchange at their bidding ... but then Modesty makes a simple phonecall that cuts the computer's connection to the net - and good triumphs over evil once again (or evil over good, depends on which side of Wall Street you're standing on I guess J).

A failed TV-pilot based on a hugely popular comicstrip series - and seeing this pilot, it's easy to see why it didn't catch on with either fans of the comicstrip or the general public. Basically, the comic was sexy and throve on its lead characters' moral ambiguity and decadence. In the pilot at hand, they are reduced to being common do-gooders who won't waste a chance to help others and are much too firmly rooted in benevolence to be interesting. Plus, Modesty and Willie's backstory might be mentioned, but nothing is made of it, and they simply lack any special features to make them anything other than your average TV-heroes. And the fact that neither Ann Turkel nor Lewis Van Bergen score particularly high on the charisma scale (at least no in this one) doesn't help much either. Well, at least Carolyn Seymour camps it up as a villainess rather deliciously, but that's not enough to save this pilot from well-deserved oblivion - by a longshot.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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