MartinHafer In 1988, CBS decided to revive the old "Mission: Impossible" TV show. However, to cut costs they did something odd...they filmed the show in Australia! The first season was made in Queensland (north of Sydney) and the second season was made in Melbourne. Generally, this isn't all that obvious, though some of team members sure sound like Aussies...especially Anthony Hamilton. So is it any good? Generally, very good...with a few exceptions. First, because of the writers strike, several of the early episodes are just remakes of old episodes. A few of the episodes (such as "The Devils" and "Bayou") are just insanely bad--with plots such as convincing a mark that Mr. Phelps is Satan himself!!! But generally, the show avoided this sort of thing and brought us more of what everyone loved back in the 60s and 70s...lots of cool plots and gadgets. And, even though Peter Graves was a good bit younger, the shows worked well. It's just too bad the network lost faith in the show and moved it in their schedule...making folks miss out on it because of the change. By the way, BOTH seasons of the reboot are available on DVD and are worth having.

Desertman84 Mission: Impossible is a television series that chronicles the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force (IMF). The show is a revival of the 1966 TV series of the same name. The only actor to return for the series as a regular cast member was Peter Graves who played Jim Phelps, although two other cast members from the original series (Greg Morris and Lynda Day George) returned as guest stars.The other regular cast includes Thaao Penghlis, Tony Hamilton,Phil Morris,Terry Markwell,who only appeared in the first season, and Jane Badler.Bob Johnson was the voice of "The Disc".The events of the series take place 15 years after the last season of the original Mission: Impossible TV series. After his protégé and successor as leader of the top-secret Impossible Missions Force is killed, Jim Phelps is called out of retirement and asked to form a new IMF team and track down the assassin.His team consists of Nicholas Black, a disguise expert and actor; Max Harte, a strongman; Casey Randall, a model-turned-agent; and Grant Collier, the son of Barney Collier, the IMF's original technology expert, and a technical genius in his own right. After finding the killer, Jim decides to stay on and keep the team together. Midway through season 1, Casey is killed during a mission (becoming the first ongoing IMF agent to be disavowed), and Secret Service agent Shannon Reed replaces her for the remainder of the series. With the exception of this cast change, Phelps' team remains constant throughout the series.This show does not live up to the original Mission Impossible series of the 1960's.But not every remake will be better than the original for that was a classic series.Nevertheless,this may not be a classic but it still should be considered an excellent series.It definitely gave birth to Mission Impossible fans to the new generation.Added to that,it will still a good show to watch despite the fact that it only lasted two seasons. Compared to the Mission Impossible films made by Tom Cruise,I still prefer this series considering that it still fun to see the IMF team work as a team and the integrity of Jim Phelps to remain intact.It was definitely a travesty to see the first Mission Impossible film by Cruise turn Jim Phelps into a villain in order to make the Tom Cruise character - Ethan Hunt - the primary IMF agent and the rest of the films become primarily "The Ethan Hunt Show".

jdollak When this series originally aired, I remember watching it with my father. I remember being enthralled by the gadgets.Now that the series is available on DVD, in two sets, it was a pleasure to watch through the whole thing.As an adult, I'm much more able to see the weaknesses the show had, but I also can appreciate some of the more responsible approaches that the show had, especially in the sense of being a largely peaceful team.The budget isn't great. Some sequences appear to have been shot on video. Several episodes use stock footage, especially later ones.The cast is remarkably attractive.The area where the show falters is later in the first season, and during much of the second. The writing got lazy. The plots got more linear, more predictable. And in some cases, the gimmick for the episode got in the way of making a decent plot.Another thing that gradually got on my nerves was the laziness in writing the opening scenes, when Phelps retrieves the mission. In many of these, he winds up retrieving the disc, and watching it, in a place much more public than usual. In one of them, he watches it on an amusement park ride, and we see people walking around in the background. Hardly a secure location.I've been watching episodes from the original series, and while the writing was more careful, and better plotted, the biggest improvement that the 88 Mission Impossible had was the pacing. The episodes felt like they moved along very quickly.This series is entirely worth watching. But, especially with the reliance on stock footage, the show looks far more dated than it should.

andrew jones I'm sad about this one. Could of been so much more but instead turned into a shadow of it's former self.Filmed in Australia due to cheaper production costs this really does leave the way open for continuity and location goofs,not to mention a large amount of Aussie actors trying to pull off all manner of accents.The re-worked episodes of old favourites seems pointless and they don't come off half as good but i understand there was a writers strike going on at the time.I'm a big fan of the original with Peter Graves (steven hill as Dan Briggs was more wooden than a ventriloquists dummy) so it's great to see him back as leader Jim Phelps.No matter how you look at it and which ever way you cut the cake there is no way the rest of the IMF team are as good the original cast. Martin Landau was acting alongside the best in feature films so it was a real coup to have him lend his wait to the original. Leonard Nimoy,Greg Morris,Barbare Bain and Peter Lupus quite simply make the new cast here look poor.Talking of Greg Morris...whats with the stories with him in it? Great to see him back but all he seemed to do in the three episodes he was in was to be knocked unconscious or be flaked out on a bed sweating. Total waste of the Barney Collier character. I do like the fact Gregs son took on the role as electronic wizard after him.Look out for some very poor back drops and one or two special effects that wouldn't look out of place on Blakes 7.There are a few good stand out episodes to be found among the rest of the batch and it's still miles better than the films with that prancing midget Tom Cruise.