I just saw the neatest reworking of "The Maltese Falcon"

It was “The Matterhorn Affair” from “The Man from UNCLE” TV series.

Instead of Sydney Greenstreet as “Caspar ‘The Fat Man’ Guttman,” it was (menacing-Eastern-European-at-large villain actor) Oscar Beregi as “Rodney Backstreet.”

Instead of Peter Lorre as “Joel Cairo,” it was Vito Scotti as “Beirut.”

Bill Dana played a schlep named “Marvin Klump” who ended up with the microfilm that everyone wanted. (Don’t know how Dana beat out schlep-at-large Marvin Kaplan for that plum role, though).

(And there was a brief appearance by Hal “Otis, the Mayberry town drunk” Smith as an auto dealer.)

Okay, Mjollnir, let us in on it…where are you seeing old “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” episodes? I haven’t had my illya kurayakined for simply ages!

TNT shows them sporadically between 4 and 5 AM Eastern time.

I tape 'em, and watch 'em after the fact (as I do with all TV programs that I watch).

Uke: I got illya kurayakined for the first time in a long time this weekend at a rained-out performance of Julius Caesar in Central Park. David McCallum played JC.

He’s aged pretty well, but his speech was disturbingly Cary Grantesque! My friends and I half expected him to say – in the style and tone of Grant’s “Ju-day, Ju-day, Ju-day” – “Bru-te. Bru-te. Bru-te.”