Airwolf

I think a lot of reviews look at this series and complain about recycled footage without taking into account this series was before effects computers. It's a large way humbling just how that and video changed TV and movie production in just a few short years. Years where Airwolf 'coming ahead of its time' by just three years or so, the show suffers for trying to do things with pre-computer-age film technology. I have to think they did more hours filming Airwolf cruising around the southwest than the studio suits thought they needed and budget complaints prevented more because it wasn't until season three that stuff got notable as repeated. Like things happen with the Stargate series and Cheyenne Mountain exterior for *six seasons*. It would have continued if HD tech didn't prompt needing a new set of Cheyenne exteriors shot. As with Stargate SG-1, if Airwolf had kept a driving force behind it's direction from the start we well could have seen a new round of footage. And probably with newer cameras of the day, too. But it was not to be. The budget item kept getting dropped. By season two the writing was on the wall that it just wasn't going to be needed.

Besides suffering from a divided series vision and objective where some shows were fluff and some writing actually had a message and a way to drive it home, Airwolf series was as much a victim of small-studio Hollywood limitations. As X-files suffered Vancouver-itis, Airwolf suffers from outdoor locations being a bit too southern California or blatantly the Universal back lot to pull off Russia, Germany or the snowy waste of Northern Alaska. And the show had to fake glaciers, volcanic explosions, Mexican deserts, and Russia and night flights time with refilming existing film with filters. With scale models and wind machines. People tugging on strings and pushing buttons. The old fashioned way. Like thirty years of TV before it. In time to make a schedule. So someone better get off their backs! They made that flying prop look gooood.

I think people also slam the believability factor without considering audiences back in 1984 weren't all that sophisticated. They didn't question if the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons had proper physics. Those were fun because it didn't. Consider that the Airwolf show (all TV shows) was a one-off, once a week thing to catch on TV and not see again unless you had one of them new, expensive VCRs. People saw shots once and the human mind filled in any mistakes. And people didn't have the Internet to hop onto and find out choppers don't surpass X knots of speed. The Boob Tube was the source of news and entertainment everyday. And people would simply believe it if the pretty scientist lady says it turns off the blades and acts like a jet.

Then they go on about how the Bell 222A was a dog of a ship to fly around. And when they weren't making it look like a Travel California tourism film, they made that thing look like a barn swallow dogging cats on a lawn. That's true magic! The ability to turn that worked up Bell into The Lady people still fill Internet boards discussing so seriously. I just don't think we have the same kind in the present day. At least not in this age of 'reality' TV... It got young people interested in helicopters and general aviation. And maybe just a touch of science? I almost can't call it an action show. It's a science fiction show actually set on the planet Earth. You really just have to roll with it without there being cell phones and fax machines and personal computers. The hero can't type a letter, but can redirect a sidewinder. He and his mentor actually get their hands dirty and fix aircraft and basic electronic circuitry. About the only show I can think of as its descendant is Heroes for bending the "they can't do that" suspension of disbelief like Airwolf did. And now all TV adventure shows/cop shows are done with a bit more attention to how long it takes to fly and drive places. To way more medical science, bombs, physics and laptops than people in 1984 ever cared to think about... As a result from shows like Airwolf and Nightrider. And who knows? Maybe fifteen years from now people will be slamming Heroes the same way?

Even though most people remember Knight Rider from the fad of the 80's to have vehicles as the stars of TV shows, Airwolf was a far superior product. Donald 'Quantum Leap' Belissario created this show about a high tech attack chopper, and oversaw its best years. Even though near the end Belissario left and the stories began to degrade, the earlier episodes are classic examples of good 80's TV, with good solid performances and breathtaking aerial sequences that put the Blue Thunder TV series to shame. A series that should be brought back.

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.

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.

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.