Airwolf

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.

AIRWOLF, which debuted as a heavily promoted CBS movie of the week in January 1984 (and continued as a weekly series until July 1986); was well written, produced (CBS kicked in a great deal of money for its production) and acted. It was a thinking person's action (and espionage) show, that truely emphasized personal relationships over technical gimickery. Every week Stringfellow Hawk and Dominic Santini (J.M. Vincent and Ernest Borgnine) fetched the ultra high tech AIRWOLF helicopter from its lair in the California desert to do the bidding of Archangel (Alex Cord) of the CIA to do one thing or another, though not usually until the last third of the episode which gave time to build a story amongst the players. The stories mostly centered around SoCal, but occasionally AIRWOLF took a trip overseas (curteousy of USAF tanker support) to fight a cold war type battle. Like most show's, the best episodes were in the first two seasons. However, by season three AIRWOLF started to look tired. By that time Jan Micael Vincent's alcholism problems caused serious production delays (in several 3rd season episodes Vincent is noticably intoxicated), such that CBS ultimately canceled the show; though not with out giving Vincent ample attempts to straighten himself out. The show still had legs, and was taken over by the USA Network (shot in Canada on a much tighter budget) for a fourth season with a new cast (Barry Van Dyke stepped in as Hawk's long lost older brother St John Hawk) to carry on the CIA's "chores". For the USA show's; cold war espionage was the theme of most of the stories as oposed to the CBS show's getting involved more in current events and family interests of Hawk's and Santini's. I liked the show alot, and was fortunate to have recorded many when USA rebroadcast them. It is of interest to note that Jan Michael Vincent went from a per episode salary of $250,000 (for the 58 CBS episodes 1984-1986) to now (2002) near poverty, and is living in a minimum security re-hab type jail, due to several arrests for public intoxication.

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.

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!

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.