‘Secret Agent’ Saves the World Without Mussing His Great Coif

UPN’s new “Secret Agent Man” is long on beautiful people, short on brains. You keep thinking it must be a spy sendup, except that it’s also humorless.

Its forte is lips and lust, its protagonist a secret agent named Monk (Costas Mandylor), who works for an amorphous body named the Agency that is pitted tonight against a vague evil named Trinity, which has its wisecracking operative Vargas (Jesus Garcia) popping cities with a super weapon that destroys electronics.

“Secret Agent Man” hasn’t one original thought, and nearly everyone in it, even Vargas, is great-looking. With thick hair so fashionably mussed he could be a KABC weatherman, Monk is one of those agents who loves the ladies, just as his curvy colleague Holiday (Dina Meyer) has the hots for him.

We open with the Agency trying to locate its best agent so he can stop Vargas. “Where is Monk?” demands the boss, Brubeck (Paul Guilfoyle). Cut to Monk, chin to chin with a busty blond over a billiard table.

Then into the room, tall, sleek and miniskirted, walks Monk’s former lover, Prima (Musetta Vander), who soon is in bed with him and down to her black bikini panties and bra. She discloses she wants to defect. From Frederick’s of Hollywood? No, from Trinity.

But the Agency, for its own reasons, may not be willing to offer Prima sanctuary. So how does our hero respond? Will Monk remain loyal to Prima? If he does, will his loyalty doom him? If it does doom him, will that interfere with his hair day?

“Secret Agent Man” is about as derivative as a series gets. That includes having the same theme song and about the same graphics as “Secret Agent,” the interesting British series of 35 years ago that starred Patrick McGoohan as a government operative who wallowed in the seamy side of espionage. “Secret Agent Man” is the seamy side of television.

* “Secret Agent Man” can be seen Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on UPN. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children.)