Mission: Impossible (TV Series) The Fixer (1989) User Reviews

This is one case where I am not sure if the IM team is working for the good guys or the bad!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 10 March 2017]

Arthur Six is a dangerous and evil man. While he is a reporter, he works hard to find various peccadilloes of politicians....not so he can expose their antic in the news but so he can blackmail and manipulate them. In other words, he's happy to be the power behind the power! Considering all the government officials tied to him, he needs to be taken out by the IM Force. However, I do wonder if this mission might not be less about national security but in protecting some evil politicians from exposure! As such, perhaps the IM Force are actually the bad guys for once!

The job of the IM Force is to get Six and his trusted henchman to distrust each other. And then, if they do this, to get them to take each other out. Interestingly, however, this one ends with BOTH of the men still alive...and a STRONG potential Six could still take down politicians IF he decides to drag them down with him! See the episode and see what I mean. All in all, a pretty good episode...but again, I was left wondering if the team ACTUALLY were the bad guys as well and were protecting evil within the government!

By the way, what sort of name is Gary Six??!!

Australianess Further Diminished

[JasonDanielBaker · 14 March 2013]

Washington TV & print journalist Arthur Six (Richard Romanus) digs up dirt to blackmail politicians. In the process he destroys lives for financial and political gain with the aid of his sadistic henchman Doyle (John Calvin). The team is dispatched to discredit him.

One of the challenges the second version of the Mission: Impossible TV series, which ran on ABC TV from 1988 to 1990 for 35 episodes, was to hide the Australianess which came through.

The cast would be augmented each week by a guest star who was usually an established American star but mostly the bit parts would be filled with Australian actors attempting foreign accents. That along with obvious use of stock footage to set action outside Australia would tend to clue viewers in to where it was really being shot - Queensland.

Here we have solid American actors Richard Romanus and John Calvin in American actress Jane Badler's first full episode as an IMF team member. We also have a scene at the Lincoln Memorial with Peter Graves and Richard Romanus which better ties together the shots of the Washington, DC skyline with the action in the episode. The finale is a party scene with actors dressed in American continental congress-era costume with a massive American flag.

They reduced the amount of Australians in the cast to main cast members Anthony Hamilton and Thaao Penghlis which allowed the show to better present itself as what it was scripted to be - the adventures of an American special missions force rather than an Australian special missions force.

Thaao Penghlis and Anthony Hamilton were well-established in America but their Australianess would tend to stand out more with other Australian actors as guest stars. When accents of lesser known Australian actors portraying American characters slipped it was confusing to American audiences.

Aussie actor Roger Newcombe who bore a resemblance to American character actor Jack Kehoe was an exception and should have been used on this series more. Here he has a minor turn as a TV host.