barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (12/16/83)
I watched the new ABC show "Masquerade" tonight, and I was pleasantly surprised. It is reminiscent of "Mission Impossible". The premise of this show is that the NIA (National Intellignece Agency) has decided to recruit civilians to help them in their espionage; the regular agents were getting caught by the bad guys because the bad guys knew who the good guys were, but the bad guys would never know about the civilian good guys. The civilians are recruited because of their unique talents. Tonight some of the ones they picked up were a plumber (Ernest Borgnine), a pickpocket who was an ace-jeep-driver (Robert Morse), and an out-of-work actor who is a makeup whiz. They pull a great con on a Soviet killer; the style was very much like those used in MI. The con went much more smoothly than MI cons generally went; because the theme of the show was that these were just regular people (some had their families along) the plot twists were generally used to emphasize how this stuff affected their lives. Oh, one of the regulars is Kirstie Alley, who some of you may remember as Saavik in "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan". -- Barry Margolin ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar