Airwolf

This show was one of my favourites as a child. Everyone I knew wanted to be stringfellow hawke, if only for the chance to fly Airwolf. The characters were good and interacted well (hawke being the moody one, Dom the comic relief). The only bad thing was towards the end of Airwolfs run they changed all the characters (actually killing off "Dom" (or a lookalike)) and making String disappear giving the helicopter to the now magically rescued St John Hawke! IF you want to enjoy this show then under no circumstances should you watch the pathetic end season (aka Airwolf II) and stick with the original characters!

This show was very well written in the first three seasons, we will not talk of the fourth season,(Airwolf II -a disgrace to the original series). The scenes were spectacular and the plots where well knitted in most of the episodes. I liked the attention to detail and the ability for it to be fairly believable, despite the fictional capability of Airwolf. The characters complimented each other and made the show very dynamic. Even the music created by S. Levay was really good. It is very unfortunate that the series ended the way it did. Jan M. Vincent had problems with alcohol and the politics with universal infringed on Bellisario's ideas. The "lady" did not go down with a blaze of glory but rather an un-answered and open ended destruction with the final series. I think that is why so many enthusiast still hang on to Airwolf, it was a killer show that just suddenly ended, even though the ratings were so high. It would be cool to have a new movie produced to give Airwolf a final resting place in T.V. history. But that is unlikely. However, there are all kinds of fan clubs and sites that celebrate this one of a kind 80's show, you will see that Airwolf is very much alive out on the internet. C.L.

As a young teenager at the time, Airwolf was compulsory viewing for a generation who wanted their "Cowboys and Indians" to have amazing gadgets and whizz-bang explosions.

In many ways, the show was essentially Knight Rider in the skies: similar comic-book technology, a central character who was essentially a loner, and echoing the concept of one man making a difference.

But in other, important ways, it was thematically very different from Knight Rider, Street Hawk, The A-Team and other action shows of the time. For one thing, the premise of the series is built not on a desire to help those in need, but by Stringfellow Hawke's possession of Airwolf for essentially selfish reasons (as leverage to try to find his MIA brother, St John). And then there is the dark edge provided by basing the series firmly in an 80s Cold War context, complete with Soviet espionage and Central American dictators, not to mention the enemy within. Sure, The A-Team constantly referred back to Vietnam and the team's status as fugitives, but it was generally done with a light touch and was rarely central to the plot itself. With Airwolf, the intrigue was key to the tone and direction of the show - although this was (ill-advisedly) diluted as the series went on.

With hindsight, the Cold War setting clearly dates the series, many of the stories are creaky and contrived, and much of what Airwolf does is clearly implausible even with today's technology. But that's really not the point. Airwolf was rip-roaring fun, it tried to tell interesting stories without relying solely on the big action sequences, and it didn't sugar-coat everything by miraculously ensuring nobody died. Sometimes it failed, but often it succeeded admirably - and on a TV budget to boot.

For UK readers, DMAX (Sky channel 155) have just started (Jan 2008) daily re-runs of Airwolf. Set your Sky+ box for this blast from the past - we may even get the re-tooled, re-cast (and sadly vastly inferior) fourth season, which to my knowledge has never previously been shown in the UK.

If you've read my review of the pilot movie for this series you'll notice I have nothing but praise for Airwolf. It really was the best show of the 1980's.

There were so many good things about this series. Alex Cord, Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine were very good in their roles (the lovely Jean-Bruce Scott joined them in season 2)and very convincing.

The plots were good. Throughout the series Airwolf went to battle against rogue dictators, wicked scientists and bad guys who wanted their hands on Airwolf.

The action scenes were always fantastic. The music accompanying the action was brilliant. There was always an action scene at the end where Airwolf went to war against the bad guys who usually had their own helicopter/plane.

It was a typical 80's show which aired when the cold war was still very hot. No-body knew who to trust. Even Michael Archangel played by Alex Cord seemed to have his own agenda. Stringfellow Hawke also had his own agenda. He was holding onto Airwolf until the government found his missing in action brother. Until that time Hawke flew Airwolf on missions to protect the free world.

A fantastic series.

Of course, Airwolf was one of the premier action shows of the 80s and was more believable than the sugar-coated antics of Knight Rider and A-Team, because it was set in the world of espionage and Stringfellow killed LOADS of bad guys when he battled them in The Lady. The series started off as a spy thriller with Airwolf duking it out with Russians, German terrorists, war criminals, renegade US agents and hardened mercenaries. If I remember rightly, ITV showed these episodes on Friday nights at 7pm back in November '84.

When the 2nd season kicked in, they moved it to an afternoon Saturday slot. This is when a new co-pilot Caitlin was introduced. She wasn't bad, and they still did good intrigue episodes such as the gripping thriller Moffatt's Ghost, Fallen Angel and HX-1 (Once A Hero was a spectacular actioner), but gradually, the series became cornier, as the Airwolf team began helping out ordinary people and there were some soapy stories such as String falling for a rock singer. They also started using stock footage in some episodes, more so in the third season.

The 3rd season got off to a cracking start with the menacing Horn Of Plenty. Richard Lynch did a good job as the manipulative Van Horn and Caitlin proved she could be a bad*** as well. Other top episodes were Airwolf II, Annie Oakley and Deadly Circle, but as I said before, they started over-using stock footage from previous series and the stories were becoming slushy. Despite this, Airwolf was arguably the best action-packed thriller on the small screen during the Reagan era.