THE WILD WILD WEST MARATHON
Decades, 12:00 p.m. ET
Another weekend, another welcome marathon from Decades. This time it’s of CBS’s The Wild Wild West, the bizarre mash-up of Westerns, comic-book villains and secret-agent capers that showed up on TV in 1965. That was when the traditional television Western, which ruled the airwaves as recently as 1959, was on the wane – and when the spy craze, thanks to the introduction of James Bond films, was all the rage. So in comes James T. West, a government spy under orders from President Ulysses G. Grant, fitted out with his own gadget-filled train car and partnered with a master of disguise fellow agent, Artemus Gordon. Ross Martin played Artemus, Robert Conrad played Jim West, and this series was bursting with beautiful women, violent brawls, and colorful bad guys. The biggest villain in The Wild Wild West also was the smallest: Miguelito Loveless, who was bent on world domination like Dr. Evil, and was played with so much playfulness by the diminutive Michael Dunn (pictured) that the show kept bringing him back, like a classic Batman bad guy. You can see Dr. Loveless today in episodes televised at 2 and 9 p.m. ET, and in additional episodes tomorrow. (Also tomorrow, at 6 a.m. ET: Speaking of the classic Batman 1960s TV series, watch for Yvonne Craig, who played Batgirl in that series, as a sexy assassin named Ecstasy La Joie.)