Television Reviews : Spy Shenanigans in NBC’s ‘Brotherhood’

You’ve heard of the Smothers Brothers? Well, these are the Spy Brothers.

Saul (code name: Romulus) and Chris (code name: Remus) are incredibly great CIA agents on the lam from John Eliot, their brilliant boss and mentor who removed them from an orphanage when they were small and raised them as brothers.

Why does Eliot (Robert Mitchum) now want them dead? Will Romulus (Peter Strauss) lead him to Remus (David Morse)? Will Remus lead him to Romulus? Will Romulus get Israeli spy Col. Erika Bernstein (Connie Sellecca) to put down her Uzi long enough to make love instead of espionage? Will Eliot’s face move?

Finding out is not worth the cost of sitting through NBC’s “Brotherhood of the Rose,” an idiotic, plodding, barely watchable two-parter airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on Channels 4, 36 and 39.

The plot involves a sort of neutral zone of secret sanctuaries where double, triple and quadruple agents of all nations can frolic, chew gum, share diet sodas and hang out together in peace. Co-conspirators here are producer/director Marvin J. Chomsky and writer Gy Waldron, whose adaptation of David Morrell’s book is an exercise in stupidity that no performers could overcome. Not that it helps that the puppy dog Morse is miscast as a killing machine and Mitchum is a marble-esque Eliot.

Some mess. As one character asks: “What the hell is this?” Exactly.