TV REVIEW : ’94 ‘I Spy’ Leaves Cosby, Culp Up a Creak

A little more than a quarter-century after the last episode of “I Spy” aired, Bill Cosby and Robert Culp are partnered again. They spend a little less time actually spying than doing their “Grumpy Old Men” act, in which many self-conscious nods are made to how much time and thinness has passed in the interval.

“The walls of ivory seem to agree with you,” Culp tells Cosby, who has retired from spydom to become a college professor. “You have that happy Buddha look.”

“Thank you,” says Cos, whose physique indeed belies a more sedentary lifestyle. “Is that a hairpiece?”

And is that dust on this script, which resorts all too readily to cliches about aging action heroes who comically huff and puff on their way to breathlessly closing the case? For anyone awaiting the sitcom version of “In the Line of Fire,” the TV movie “I Spy Returns” (on CBS, Channels 2 and 8, tonight at 8) happily steps into the breach.

Old-fashioned Commies do figure into the villainous mix here, but these two aren’t fighting the Cold War, they’re fighting the Cute War.

Turns out Cosby’s daughter has joined the secret government agency that Dad once belonged to, unbeknown to him. When he finds out and makes an angry visit to Culp (now a high agency muck-a-muck) to protest, Cosby learns his daughter has been teamed with Culp’s son. These two doting dads can’t resist tagging along on the kids’ first mission in Vienna, where, inevitably, routine surveillance of a defecting Russian biologist turns into a world-saving affair.

They spy; I sigh. You get paunch jokes aplenty, ‘70s-style car-chase climaxes and neat lessons about the complementarity of youth and experience, despite the comically intended ineptitude of all ages here.

Cosby at least has a natural way with the drollery attempted, and the fleeting amusement he affords offers a glimpse of how much fun a 25-year reunion could’ve been had he (as executive producer) commissioned a brighter script. Culp, meanwhile, overcompensatingly attacks the creaky gags more than he invests himself in them, and it’s hard to blame him. The dully drawn offspring hardly register, despite their ample screen time, circumventing the likelihood of any “Next Generation” sequels.