1. Robert Vaughn from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 2. Fred Flintstone 3. Rod Serling from The Twilight Zone 4. Jackie Gleason from The Honeymooners 5. Don Adams from Get Smart 6. The Smothers Brothers 7. Bob Denver from Gilligan’s Island 8. Donna Douglas from The Beverly Hillbillies 9. Jerry Mathers from Leave It To Beaver 10. Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance, Desi Arnaz and William Frawley from I Love Lucy.

Providence Journal illustration / Gunnar Johnson

I think I’m becoming my father. He’s constantly saying they don’t make movies like they used to, then launching into a reverie about Stagecoach, the 1939 version; now that was a flick.

Well, the release of Get Smart in theaters has me thinking the same way.

Get Smart — now that was a TV show; and from an era full of them.

You had to love Smart’s Cone of Silence and his shoe phone — and that time the bad guy had him hostage, and told Smart he could choose the way he would die. So Smart suggested, “How about old age?”

I think every 11-year-old boy back then wanted to be a secret agent, and would have done it had Woodstock and the counter-culture not taken away the CIA’s glamour.

For me, it was all about The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn, was my hero. He paired with Ilya Kuryakin, who of all things was a Russian agent, this at the height of the Cold War. But it was logical because the two were fighting something greater than any enemy nation: The evil international conspiracy called THRUSH. This was far worse than the SMERSH of James Bond fame. THRUSH was going to take over the world and only Vaughn and Kuryakin could stop them, chiefly by administering karate chops while wearing nicely tailored suits.

They were very resourceful, like the time they got locked in a bathroom that was filling with poison gas, but grabbed a shaving cream can, wrapped it in a hand towel, set the package on fire and it blew off the door. I would get very defensive — still would today — if anyone called scenes like that unrealistic. Don’t you dare say that about Napoleon Solo.

I’ve clung fast to my worship of Robert Vaughn, even as he’s become the spokesman for law firms wanting you to call them after a slip-and-fall. He can do no wrong. About 10 years ago, when I was hosting a Sunday morning TV interview show on Channel 10, he was in town, and we landed him as a guest. The whole time, I kept thinking, “I am not worthy.” Afterward, the show’s producer, who knew the backstory, gave me a photo of the two of us live on camera. On it, he’d drawn a thought-balloon over my head saying, “This is the high point of my life.” Over Vaughn’s head was a thought-balloon saying, “This is the low point of my life.”

I had to wrestle with whether to be a spy or a cowboy, in part because of Gunsmoke. That was one of the last shows unashamed to showcase traditional gender roles. If anyone was the icon of the strong but decent male, it was Marshall Dillon, keeping the peace in Dodge City. And as another columnist once pointed out, the show’s tavern manager, Miss Kitty, knew how to take a compliment without filing charges of sexual harassment. Those were the days.

Of course, there was the mother of all scary shows, The Twilight Zone. Recent horror franchises like Halloween are thin gruel compared to the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling, its creator and writer, knew you didn’t need a chainsaw to frighten people. I still get the creeps when I think back to the episode with Talking Tina, a little doll, who began by saying cheerful things like “I’m talking Tina, and I love you,” and moved on to, “I’m talking Tina and I’m going to kill you.” I just freaked myself out writing that last sentence.

And they don’t make shows like Bonanza anymore, about white-maned Ben Cartwright running the Ponderosa with his three sons. Though I never really did get what happened to his wives. I remember him being widowed three times. If that show was made today, it would slowly come out that he’d poisoned them or something for their insurance. Or more likely, the plot would turn on predatory women with implants and belly-button rings trying to seduce the old coot for his cattle.

I totally related to Beaver Cleaver, since my own older brother had friends like Eddie Haskell. He was the guy who fawned over the household parents until they were out of earshot. Remember the old, “Hello Mrs. Cleaver, you’re looking truly lovely today . . . hey Beav, you little jerk.”

I could also relate to the Smothers Brothers, a comedy duo who kept arguing which of the two their mother liked best. Even today, when I call my own parents, I announce it’s their favorite son, and then have to correct them when they say, “Nicky? Matthew?” No, it’s Mark.

The other profession besides spy and cowboy I considered was soldier, because of Combat, a series about an American infantry squad in World War II. It in part spurred me to spend endless hours behind my house using my baseball bat as a sub-machine gun to go after imaginary Nazis I was convinced were lurking in the Meyer’s backyard next door. Which has me wondering: How come you don’t see boys today hunting down al-Qaida with their lacrosse sticks?

And where are all the espionage series’? Aside from Get Smart and U.N.C.L.E., the 1960s had I Spy, the Avengers and Secret Agent.

I guess they’re not realistic enough to cut it in today’s more complex world, where we don’t even know the enemy’s address.

Or maybe it’s that TV can’t afford to pay for actors anymore.

I think I’ll go watch American Idol reruns.

mpatinkin@projo.com