RoboCop

I remember watching this as a young teenager and thinking it was pretty enjoyable but after approximately 15 years, I decided to watch this with a fresh perspective. I'm a big fan of the original movie and while the series is toned down a lot from the movie, the show is still a great Robocop production. Plus, if you have kids, you can watch this with them in the same room. I don't understand the critic reviews being so harsh on this show. Most of the episodes are good. A few great. Some fair. I can't say there was an episode that didn't keep me entertained.

Richard Eden does a great portrayal of Robo/Alex Murphy. Yvette Niper as Lisa Madigen is more than just a smoke show. The rest of the cast perform well for the most part. The effects are great and the sets look good although the CGI has aged pretty poorly but it's admissible given the age. The show deserved at least another season.

I was recently at a used video/bookstore where I bought a video thinking it was RoboCop the movie. After further inspection on the ride home, I realized I had accidentally bought the pilot episode of the old TV series I used to watch in my earlier years. I decided on watching on it. If I didn't like it, I would bring it back and buy the movie.

I didn't.

This pilot is so stupid and outlandlishly ridiculous, that the only plausible explanation for it was that the producers were trying to recreate a RoboCop version of the old Batman show. That's the only way I can explain the campy quips, the ridiculous villains (Pudface Morgan, hah!) and the bad acting. The whole experience just felt to me like something for the kids whose mothers wouldn't allow them to see the very violent, sometimes disturbing 1988 movie. I have heard that the later TV movies and animated series were better. I certainly hope so.

Low-key series version of the blockbuster film does much with its far more modest resources. The story is much the same, but the satirical elements and personal stories are done more stylishly here; they take up some of the slack left by the absence of much of the large-scale violence and futuristic hardware (necessitated by the lower budget inherent in syndicated television). The cast is surprisingly strong: Yvette Nipar as lead cop Madigan and Andrea Roth as Diana/Neurobrain are both highly charismatic. Richard Eden does a fine job but is largely wasted. Emmy-nominated on "Santa Barbara," here he is stuck playing a machine with little opportunity to show even the slightest bit of emotion. The satirical elements of the show are particularly strong; I have some feeling "Robocop" would be much more successful had it been produced in 2001 or 2002 rather than 1994. Unfortunately, only one season of episodes was produced.

This TV series actually manages to capture more of the original than either of the two theatrical sequels. Okay, it's toned down for television, but the self-parodying humor is there in all the right places. It's basically a live-action cartoon, as the like of Cray Z. Mollardo, the E Coli Brothers, and Pudface Morgan return time and time again to battle the stone-faced Robocop. We get a bit more on Murphy's background (although his wife shows up _way_ too often), and there are lot of parody-commercials. It's a lot better than a lot of the first-run syndication stuff out there. Catch it on the Sci-Fi Channel.

I rather liked the series. I saw it as an extension of the Robocop 3 humor and a good approach for a Primetime network TV series. (A more Robocop 1- like series would fit on a HBO or other cable network and would please the Robo fan base better.) It gives a nod to the 60's Batman series in not taking itself too seriously but isn't as cartoonish as said Batman. The humour is more akin to Escape from New York (another debate for another forum)than the Three Stooges and is campy at times. Camp is an acquired taste that rarely appeals to the fans who enjoyed the gritty and bloody violence of the first 2 films. What it has going for it is that its fun, witty (the Rowdy Roddy Piper episode is a classic and I'm not just talking about the Major Market uniform either), and expanded the Robo universe in a pre-Dark Knight Returns/Spawn comic-bookish way. The writing varied but the surrounding cast and guest stars made up for it. I can show my kids this series and enjoy it with them and then share the movie series and the Prime Directives miniseries of movies with them when they're older. This is a PG Robocop series and should be judged on its own merits and not compared to the R rated movies which were created for another market altogether.