Bruce Geller makes the planning of a deception worth watching. We rate his patient, ingenious television highly, with one reservation: when the scheme loses its grip, the people rarely have enough to keep us interested.
Fi1m perspective
A self-destructing mission tape is an efficient way to ask for our attention. In Mission: Impossible (1966), Bruce Geller makes the organisation of a deception absorbing television. His operatives have disguises, gadgets and little need to talk at length. We were absorbed by their steady management of a deception, because the series lets us follow the work rather than merely assuring us that these people are clever. The cast's composure makes the complicated business easier to believe.
The decisive move in his career was from taking writing assignments to devising a format that could keep generating stories. His television writing included Have Gun – Will Travel (1957), and he developed Mission: Impossible while working on Rawhide, where he was co-executive producer in 1964–65. Mannix (1967) gave him a second series as creator and producer. His only feature, Harry in Your Pocket (1973), brought him behind the camera as director as well as producer. His reputation rests chiefly on the television series, and our enthusiasm starts there too.
His collaborators included composer Lalo Schifrin, but our clearest sense of Geller comes from the scripts' priorities. Technical detail is researched, personal histories are kept sparse, and intellectual problem-solving takes precedence over violence. That gives the cast room to suggest expertise through composure. It also means an episode needs a plan interesting enough to compensate for how little we know about the people executing it.
That limitation becomes harder to overlook across seven series. Even with varied plots, the dependable format can make a deception feel too settled before it has properly begun. When the scheme is less absorbing, Geller's creation does not always give us a person worth worrying about instead. We admire the discipline, but another demonstration of competence will not sustain an evening indefinitely. Start with Mission: Impossible, and leave some space between episodes.
Biography
Bruce Geller was an American television writer, producer and director. Born in New York City in 1930, he graduated from Yale University in 1952. He began his career writing scripts for series including Have Gun – Will Travel, The Rifleman and Zane Grey Theater in the 1950s and early 1960s, and served as co-executive producer on Rawhide.
In 1966 Geller created the spy series Mission: Impossible, writing the pilot episode and producing the programme, which ran on CBS until 1973. He received two Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on the series. Geller also created and produced the detective series Mannix (1967–1975). His only feature film credit was as writer, producer and director of Harry in Your Pocket (1973). He died in a plane crash in 1978.
