Airwolf

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.

Airwolf is a good example of dramatic action television that came out of the 1980s. What makes this different is that most, if not all, of its episodes involves aircraft at some stage in the story.

The four seasons of Airwolf feature the main characters getting mixed up in all kinds of drama that eventually needs the Airwolf helicopter to help. Airwolf is an advanced prototype combat helicopter capable of supersonic speed that is deployed on missions of personal and national interest, flown by two of the main characters described below.

Jan Michael Vincent plays Stringfellow Hawke, an ex-Vietnam helicopter pilot and Ernest Borgnine who plays Domenic Santini, an old pilot from way back. Together as buddles, they secretly fly Airwolf with funding provided by an FBI-like firm that agrees to support them until they can locate String's brother, believed to be missing and still in Vietnam.

After an ambitious pilot two-part episode (later re-trimmed into a telemovie) which sets up the ongoing series, Airwolf settles into a typical action TV show formula, however the overuse of repeated aerial footage of the Airwolf helicopter (often sped up to make it more exciting) will spoil it for late comers to the series.

For helicopter enthusiasts it will reward them with countless sequences involving Airwolf (a modified Bell 222) and many other types, often seeing Hughes 500s deployed as the enemy gunships.

For trainspotters, it's always "fun" to see the footage from the pilot or early episodes being used in later episodes, or being surprised to see they have shot new footage. It's easy to assume that the running costs of the helicopters had a major impact on the production. The "dramatic" original landing sequences were often a highlight.

Some episodes were grounded in personal drama, some were just ridiculous by today's science and some were standout stories and made you wish for more. Many episodes end with a montage of Airwolf flying around with the wonderful Slyvestor Levay electronic theme music as the credits roll.

Season 4 was a low-budget cable-funded continuation of the series featuring new characters mixed with old helicopter footage. It is almost dis-owned by fans of the earlier 3 seasons in much the same way Galactica 1980 was by Battlestar Galactica fans.

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.

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.

I think a lot of reviews look at this series and complain about recycled footage without taking into account this series was before effects computers. It's a large way humbling just how that and video changed TV and movie production in just a few short years. Years where Airwolf 'coming ahead of its time' by just three years or so, the show suffers for trying to do things with pre-computer-age film technology. I have to think they did more hours filming Airwolf cruising around the southwest than the studio suits thought they needed and budget complaints prevented more because it wasn't until season three that stuff got notable as repeated. Like things happen with the Stargate series and Cheyenne Mountain exterior for *six seasons*. It would have continued if HD tech didn't prompt needing a new set of Cheyenne exteriors shot. As with Stargate SG-1, if Airwolf had kept a driving force behind it's direction from the start we well could have seen a new round of footage. And probably with newer cameras of the day, too. But it was not to be. The budget item kept getting dropped. By season two the writing was on the wall that it just wasn't going to be needed.

Besides suffering from a divided series vision and objective where some shows were fluff and some writing actually had a message and a way to drive it home, Airwolf series was as much a victim of small-studio Hollywood limitations. As X-files suffered Vancouver-itis, Airwolf suffers from outdoor locations being a bit too southern California or blatantly the Universal back lot to pull off Russia, Germany or the snowy waste of Northern Alaska. And the show had to fake glaciers, volcanic explosions, Mexican deserts, and Russia and night flights time with refilming existing film with filters. With scale models and wind machines. People tugging on strings and pushing buttons. The old fashioned way. Like thirty years of TV before it. In time to make a schedule. So someone better get off their backs! They made that flying prop look gooood.

I think people also slam the believability factor without considering audiences back in 1984 weren't all that sophisticated. They didn't question if the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons had proper physics. Those were fun because it didn't. Consider that the Airwolf show (all TV shows) was a one-off, once a week thing to catch on TV and not see again unless you had one of them new, expensive VCRs. People saw shots once and the human mind filled in any mistakes. And people didn't have the Internet to hop onto and find out choppers don't surpass X knots of speed. The Boob Tube was the source of news and entertainment everyday. And people would simply believe it if the pretty scientist lady says it turns off the blades and acts like a jet.

Then they go on about how the Bell 222A was a dog of a ship to fly around. And when they weren't making it look like a Travel California tourism film, they made that thing look like a barn swallow dogging cats on a lawn. That's true magic! The ability to turn that worked up Bell into The Lady people still fill Internet boards discussing so seriously. I just don't think we have the same kind in the present day. At least not in this age of 'reality' TV... It got young people interested in helicopters and general aviation. And maybe just a touch of science? I almost can't call it an action show. It's a science fiction show actually set on the planet Earth. You really just have to roll with it without there being cell phones and fax machines and personal computers. The hero can't type a letter, but can redirect a sidewinder. He and his mentor actually get their hands dirty and fix aircraft and basic electronic circuitry. About the only show I can think of as its descendant is Heroes for bending the "they can't do that" suspension of disbelief like Airwolf did. And now all TV adventure shows/cop shows are done with a bit more attention to how long it takes to fly and drive places. To way more medical science, bombs, physics and laptops than people in 1984 ever cared to think about... As a result from shows like Airwolf and Nightrider. And who knows? Maybe fifteen years from now people will be slamming Heroes the same way?