Television series

Get Smart

Name: Get Smart
Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction, Espionage
Released: 1965
Cast: Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, Edward Platt

Get Smart is the sitcom where James Bond's slick machinery gets handed to an idiot with unwavering confidence. Maxwell Smart bumbles through Cold War espionage armed with gadgets that malfunction and villains more exasperated than menacing. It's silly in a disciplined way — every gag on rails, every catchphrase perfectly timed. Ideal for anyone who wants spy tropes gently detonated rather than reverently repeated.

TVMaze rating

7.7

If you liked this

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery1997

Mike Myers built a whole cinematic universe on the same joke Get Smart pioneered: a spy who's supremely confident and completely ridiculous, dropped into a genre that takes itself far too seriously.

But The gross-out gags and repetition-as-comedy style hasn't aged gracefully for everyone, and some of it leans juvenile.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery poster

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!1988

Leslie Nielsen's deadpan disaster-detective is Get Smart's closest cousin in tone — earnest idiocy delivered with total sincerity, one visual pun stacked on another until you're helpless.

But It's a parody of cop movies rather than spy ones, so the target's slightly different even if the rhythm is identical.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! poster

Police Squad!1982

The short-lived TV predecessor to Naked Gun, made by the same team, with the same rapid-fire visual gags and a laugh-per-minute rate Get Smart would recognize as kin.

But Only six episodes exist, cancelled too soon, so you'll finish it in an afternoon and immediately want more that isn't there.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold1965

Same year, same Cold War spy machinery Get Smart is joking about — this shows you exactly what the joke is standing on, and what it's protecting you from feeling.

Made the same year as Get Smart, this is the Cold War played dead straight — grim, morally exhausted, and bleak about what espionage actually costs a person.

But It is slow, joyless, and deliberately anti-glamorous — the opposite of a fun night in, by design.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold poster

Inspector Gadget1983no page yet

Don Adams voices another bumbling gadget-obsessed agent here, decades later, in cartoon form — same walking-disaster energy, now safe for kids and somehow just as funny.

But It's a children's cartoon at heart, with simpler plots and none of the era's Cold War satire.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.1964

This is the glossy, straight-faced show Get Smart was gently mocking — watch it and you'll spot exactly which tropes Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were aiming at.

But It's played completely straight, so if you're only after laughs, this will feel like the wrong show entirely.

Johnny English2003no page yet

Rowan Atkinson carries the torch decades later: an inept British agent, total self-belief, and physical comedy precise enough to make disaster look like choreography.

But It's broader and more slapstick, with less of the verbal wit that makes Get Smart's scripts sing.

Archer2009

A raunchier, more cynical spin on the same premise — a preposterous agency full of incompetents, told with rapid-fire dialogue and an animation style built for absurd violence.

But The humor is much darker and more adult, with a self-aware, meta edge that's a different flavor of funny.

Sledge Hammer!1986no page yet

A gloriously dumb cop who loves his gun more than people, playing the same trick as Get Smart: total incompetence disguised as total confidence, gag after gag.

But It's more of a cult curio than a classic, and the satire is aimed at action movies, not spies.

The Pink Panther1963

Inspector Clouseau is spycraft's clumsy cousin in the detective world — pratfalls, mispronunciations, and an unearned swagger that Maxwell Smart would recognize as a kindred spirit.

But It's a heist comedy more than an espionage one, and the pace is slower and more classically cinematic.

Duck Soup1933

Get Smart's whole engine — incompetence in high places played for satire of the state itself — is a direct descendant of what Groucho and company were doing here first.

The Marx Brothers invented anarchic-authority comedy decades earlier: bumbling officials, meaningless wars, and total contempt for anyone who takes power seriously, all at breakneck pace.

But It's black-and-white, vaudeville-paced, and some of its verbal gags require patience for a much older comic rhythm.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies2006

Same target — the smug, self-assured secret agent genre — but filtered through French cinema and a different national sense of what's funny about imperial arrogance.

France's own deadpan spy parody, following a preening, oblivious agent through Cairo with a straight face that makes every joke land twice as hard.

But It's in French with subtitles, and its satire of 1950s colonial attitudes needs a little historical context to fully land.