‘Spy Game’ Puts Fun In Cloak And Dagger

The stated premise of ABC’s “Spy Game,” premiering at 8, is that the world is full of out-of-work Cold War spies out to cause trouble.

But the real agenda is to plant tongue firmly in cheek and have some fun with the spy genre. Linden Ashby and Allison Smith are the guy-girl spy team who battle the forces of evil.

How camp? Tonight’s opening scene features cameos by Patrick Macnee (“The Avengers”) and Peter Lupus (“Mission Impossible”) as golf buddies. They show great form in a free-for-all that looks like it’s straight out of the old “Batman” TV series.

Ashby plays ex-CIA agent Lorne Cash called in from the cold to help Max London (Smith), a member of the government’s Emergency Counter-Hostilities Organization, foil a plan to assassinate the president.

It almost works. Although the chemistry clicks between the two stars, the story is thin. The characters are more cliches than caricatures. But “Spy Game” could turn out to be lots of fun.

Highlights

“Lethal Weapon 2” (1989), NBC at 8:30: Mel Gibson and Danny Glover reunite as Los Angeles detectives, and Joe Pesci joins the mix as a crooked accountant tied to a drug cartel.

It’s action-packed, but it’s lacking the original’s thrills. Repeat.

“Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS at 8:30: Ray (Ray Romano) brings home a stray dog, reopening old wounds about a pooch he had to give up as a child because of allergies. Kristi Yamaguchi has a cameo.

“Robert Ludlum’s ‘The Apocalypse Watch”’ (1997), ABC at 9: London’s Big Ben is the target of terrorists in the two-part movie’s conclusion. Patrick Bergin and Virginia Madsen star as the mismatched and unlikely pair who can stop the attack.

“The American Experience,” KSPS at 9: The battle between Orson Welles and newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst is laid out in this fascinating documentary. Repeat.

“Pauly,” FOX at 9:30: Pauly Shore plays a freeloader whose laid-back lifestyle is disrupted when his widowed dad (David Dukes) marries a younger woman (Charlotte Ross) who wants her stepson out of her new home. Unavailable for review.