Mann & Machine

Yancy Butler as the Bionic Woman? The star of Switchblade played a robotic woman of the future who fought off the bad guys... Mann & Machine was a filler show that only lasted about 9 episodes. I remember getting very excited about this show coming on (as I LOVED the Bionic Woman) but this one just couldn't measure up. It was actually yesterday (March 1, 2004) that I came across the pilot episode that I taped back in 1992...after watching it (12 years later) I see a lot of the hit show "Alias" & the motion picture "Laura Croft" mixed in it. Still, it wasn't a great show, but maybe in 2016 (12 years from now) I will watch again & give it another shot! For now I'll give it a 5 out of 10.

In the future a cop gets a beautiful female robot as his partner. this is an experimental project. Detective Mann knows he is being monitored, so he has to be careful, If she were a real woman and they were not being monitored, he would fall head over heels in love with her. However he fears he would look foolish if he showed his true feelings for her. The audience was not fascinated with this and the show got poor ratings.

I remember watching this back in the early 1990's when, aside from the Star Trek franchise, there was very little in good sci-fi on TV. This show had some good potential that, unfortunately, never got explored. The vision of the future was well done (one of the better semi-dystopian interpretations on TV since Max Headroom), and the ongoing chemistry between the two leads was pretty good. Never intended to be "the bionic woman" that one reviewer labeled it, Yancy Butler does well as the new-model robot/android, with the right touch of unintentional sexuality in a character just learning the nuances of actual human interactions (esp. between the sexes). Plus, they didn't bring on all of her artificial abilities all at once, instead developing them - and the relationship between the two leads - as they went along. (The scene where she takes out her eyes, and her partner's reaction, comes to mind as an example.) Would it have survived if they'd given it the full season to blossom? In the TV environment of the day, probably not, but it probably would have fared better today on the cable landscape.

Wonderful early 90s show.

Full of life and with great performances.

It's really too bad that NBC changed its mind about its commitment to Dick Wolf at that time and dumped this show and South Beach into the Summer so they could kill them without really giving them a chance. Both shows were extremely well-made and would have been big hits if they had been given any support by NBC.

Later Law and Order's ratings picked up and dick Wolf became again their knight in shining armor.

It's also too bad for Yancy Butler who ended up doing awful movies and shows like Witchblade, and for David Andrews who is only now seeing a well-deserved career revival.

Best show of the early 1990s to manage cancel the alarm. Who episode Yancy Butler was cool.