Night Man

Fantastic show, for the reasons that all others have disliked it. It's cheesy, very predictable, and great fun to watch because it's so poor. I cannot say anything positive about the quality of acting or production, (and the the blue-screen flying sequences are some of the worst I have ever seen!), yet the overall appeal comes from the enjoyment of seeing such low quality pulp TV. Surely to become a cult classic, as long as audiences don't take it too seriously, or expect too much!

I will not hold the producers of this series accountable for the drastic changes made to the character of The Night Man. In the comic books all he has is the one power, and though it is a really cool power, it is not extremely valuable on its own. The plot line of a first season episode actually revolves around this somewhat humbling fact. Because of this, The Night Man is not what you might call "made for TV", so I think some changes had to be made so that his character would look good in a Fantasy/SciFi/action genre. On a syndicated budget, this is a very tall order, yielding the cheesy results that have been mentioned in other posts. As far as the acting, it may not have been award-winning, but neither was it career-killing, and the music was excellent, thanks to Marc Bonilla. The writers did do a poor job with continuity, and some of the dialog seems a bit forced, but that just makes it even cheesier and thus much more enjoyable if you are in the mood for it. Syndicated TV series have, for a long time, been providing cheap thrills and guilty pleasures. At this, The Night Man series excels, making it a show well worth watching.

The Chrysler Prowler looks great. I considered buying one, and our local dealership managed to get one. It was a beautiful if impractical car. It wasn't balanced right so taking curves was a little tricky. And getting out of it, that really took effort. It was more of a collector's item than anything. Basically this series is like the car, it has some very pretty people and great scenes in San Francisco but it too is a sort of collectors item.

I figure Earl Holliman was hired to give the series some gravitas, and he was the only real actor in the series. The premise should be a warning to potential viewers, Johnny Domino (Matt McColm) is the son of retired cop Frank Dominus (Holliman) is riding a streetcar when he is struck by lightening and develops certain powers, one allows him to hear what people are thinking. Provided with a super suit, one developed to make American soldiers close to invincible, Johnny Domino becomes crime-fighting hero NightMan.

There aren't many "actors" is this series so don't look for compelling performances unless you like seeing a shirtless Matt McColm. He's a 90s version of Clint Walker, remember Cheyenne? Basically, this is a mindless show but if you can't sleep but enjoy munching popcorn while having a beer, then you can watch this knowing if you fall asleep, you haven't missed anything in this fluffernutter attempt at sci-fi.

Well, I tuned in to see something very funny and was not disappointed. I laughed till my cheeks were numb and I nearly went into a catatonic state. Only then did I slowly realise that this was supposed to be a serious sci-fi drama! Silly me! The plot was pathetic but what really made my laugh was the costumes! Why it was ever made is a mystery to me.

I always enjoyed this show. The Malibu comic that this was based on was fantastic. When they turned it into a syndicated TV show it looked quite a bit cheesier in flesh and blood than on the printed page, but I still really enjoyed it. The show did add some gadgets to the character that he didn't use in the original comic. Steve Englehart created the character of Night Man and he was okay with those changes. He wrote for the show and didn't think that the high tech gadgets got in the way of the heart and soul of the character. I agree. This was a fun show. Rumor has it that it would have gone another season if Marvel hadn't bought Malibu comics and then gone bankrupt. That's too bad. I always enjoyed Night Man. It was good fun!