Defining a genre -- The roots of a family tree : 1900 to 1961 -- Bond, Beatles, and camp : the men from U.N.C.L.E. -- More British than Bond : John Steed, The avengers, and feminist role-playing -- Cold War sports and games : I spy and racial politics -- The Cold War and existential fables : Danger man, Secret agent, and The prisoner -- The page and the screen : The saint and Robin Hood spies -- Interchangeable parts : missions: impossible -- James Bond on the prairie : from The wild wild West to the Secret adventures of Jules Verne -- From tongues in cheek to tongues sticking out : Get smart and the spoofing of a genre -- Also-rans and new branches : network secret agents from 1963 to 1980 -- Reagan, le Carré, Clancy, cynicism, and cable : down to Earth in the 1980s and 1990s -- The return of fantasy and the dark nights of spies : The x-files, La femme Nikita, and the new millennium -- Active and inactive files : Alias, 24, The agency, and twenty-first-century spies -- Conclusion : the past, present, and future of TV espionage : why spies?