Supercopter

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.

In my opinion - the answer is definitely yes. I'm not speaking of the monstrous super-copter, or at least, not mainly of it. The character of Stringfellow Hawk, who is the main attraction of the show, is one you might find in nowadays shows. Not a shallow hero, but rather a complex and deep one. In fact, I found Hawk's character to be very similar to another, more recent one - that of FBI's legendary agent Fox Mulder. I'm sure many eyebrows must be raised right now but think of the following - Both characters are eccentric, isolated and have only one close friend whom they trust, both Hawk an Mulder are obsessed with a missing sibling and their lives are centered around that issue. Both have their own truth and won't hesitate risking their lives for that truth. Need I say more? Jan Michael Vincent was the perfect choice for Hawk's roll - Hawk and Vincent are one. JMV brought a lot of him self into his character, the two are one, practically inseparable. In on of the discussions forum I'm participating in, a question was raised regarding the possibility of making an Airwolf movie. I said that I hope no such movie will be made because I can't see anyone entering JMV shoes as Stringfellow hawk. All of the forum members agreed. All in all, I think that what made Airwolf the great show it was, is JMV and of course we must not put down Ernest Borgnines contribution. Airwolf will always remain a classic.

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.

What a great TV show, that deserves to have been made into a movie, the flying squences are great,the cast were so right. The only stain on the series are the people that tried to remake the series on a home movie budget and replaced all the actors from the original series. This is a show that deserves to be rerun for many years to come.

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.