The 1960s drama 'Mission Impossible' was the most poorly-named TV show of its time, according to a man who enjoys thinking about pointless bullshit.
The theme of the series, which ran from 1966 to 1973, was that a team of secret American agents - 'possibly' working for the government - known as the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), set about trying to disprove the claim that the missions they were handed were impossible.
Every episode would start the same way, with a mission being explained by way of a message on a cassette player, at the end of which, the speaker would tell the IMF leader, Jim Phelps (Peter Graves), that:
"this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds."
Sometimes, it was 10 seconds.
Then, one, or several, of the IMF agents would get to work on the 'impossible mission', before, finally, being able to prove that the mission was entirely possible, and, in some cases, downright straightforward.
Indeed, one might easily say that a better name for the show - which was mildly-entertaining - would have been 'Mission Unimpossible'.
One of the least impossible missions was undertaken at the start of series 7 when, having been summoned to an address in New York, to take into their protective custody a KGB agent who wanted to defect to the West, they arrived on the scene to find that the 'agent' was a cat - Boris - who was stuck in a tree, and wanted to defecate.
This story will self-destruct in the future.
* NOTE: The Impossible Missions Force (IMF) should not be confused with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).