Going Solo

Arriving on television screens at the height of tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R., NBC’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-68) quickly became one of the network’s most popular shows of the decade. At the centre of the action, circumventing torturous restraints, nuclear threats and noxious gases (to name a few predicaments), emerged a quippy, sartorial spy by the name of Napoleon Solo — Uncle Sam’s answer to the wave of espionage-themed entertainment that producers Norman Felton and Sam Rolfe were keen to capitalise on following the success of the first two James Bond films. By The Rake’s standards, Solo had an edge over his British counterpart because he accessed his headquarters (the eponymous United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, or U.N.C.L.E) via a secret passage in a New York tailor’s. He was, perhaps, the most sartorially gifted spy of all.

While the character’s loyalty is firmly grounded in North American soil (Solo’s origins initially oscillated between Canada and the U.S. before the show’s creators settled on the latter), Ian Fleming’s influence was in fact the root that clutched, the author himself christening our hero before exiting the series following orders from Bond producers.

Unlike previous occupants of our Rake Incarnate column, Solo does not as heavily bear the brunt of the ‘which is best’ debate, there being only two on-screen iterations: Robert Vaughn, whose rakish charms endeared him to the public and kept the torch alight for almost 20 years (reprising the role a final time for a television film in 1983), and a similarly square-jawed Henry Cavill, who convincingly donned the suits (and the American accent) in 2015’s cinematic remake, helmed by Guy Ritchie.

Despite the marked gap that some might view as rich for reinterpretation, Ritchie remained loyal to the source material, gleefully embracing the quintessential sixties camp — commonly eschewed by other franchises in the aughts in favour of gritty realism — while giving the characters new stakes and motives (and upping the set design, of course). Given The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s central dynamic, between Solo’s all-American charmer and Russian agent Illya Kuryakin’s stilted yet stoic intellectual, Cavill’s casting perhaps represented a geographical middleman of sorts, neatly positioned between the powers at play who shouldn’t work together but just... do (alas, in fictitious circumstances). Or perhaps we Brits are just greedy to claim iconic spies as our thing, given the dearth of memorable superheroes from these shores.

However, the fact that Solo endured for 60-plus years with only a single reimagining is what sets his character apart. As alluded to above, Ritchie appeared invested in paying homage as opposed to reinventing the wheel. Solo’s penchant for womanising is evident without its compromising the necessary pathos injected by the writers from time to time. While we might detect some manipulation (subliminal or not) in his methods to obtain information from female subjects, his intentions are ostensibly untainted. He is shown to mourn relationships while remaining the perennial ‘free agent’. Additionally, he is capable of emotionally evolved responses that acknowledge the impact of such heightened situations on those around him, particularly women, which serves as an oddly refreshing outlook when misogyny fuelled by incel culture continues to rely on the narrative of female hysteria. Of course, Solo’s constant punchlines when in peril may seem dated, but that comes with the territory of scripted espionage, sampled on occasion by even the most hard-boiled of directors.

Ultimately, he possesses qualities that require not so much an update but a reprise every so often: he is a reassuring figure during times of geopolitical turmoil (which feel oddly resonant today) who never fails to show up in a sharp suit, defuse hairy situations with fizzing dialogue, and retain the rakishness that from the beginning made him a fan favourite in the genre of spy fiction. As Solo famously said, “When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. I’ve got it.”