Airwolf

I am in a state of shock whenever i see this program on tv, the first series was a classic, the second was good and the third was watchable mainly due to the budget. However the forth "DEAR GOD" what were they thinking. Killing of someone who looked like Dominic Santini, did string die or not and not even attempting to show anything to do with Alex Cord other than "He has been re-assigned" to sum god awful place and what happend to Jean Bruce Scott. The sound of Airwolf changed, the action sequences were put together from the earlier series and where did all those computers come from in the hidden base, which by the way only took one episode for Lock and Rivers to find whereas it took what four episodes for Alex Cord to even get near it. It is an insult to Mr Bellasario and everyone else involved in the original. This must of been a good idea to someone.

Cheaply produced, uses old aerial footage from original series, bad acting, the story falls apart as they kill off Dom and wound String in the first episode, rescue St John with amazing ease and insult every fan of the original series. If the original cast had remained this show might even have survived the budget cuts, alas it died a slow and very painful death at the hand of a cable tv company.

I was a die hard fan of the originally Airwolf while I was in my mid-teens, so I was definitely target audience at the time. Jan-Michael Vincent's brooding character was the stuff of legends for myself and my friends back then. The roar of Airwolf's engines was awe inspiring too us.

Then came the new Airwolf. Pure garbage. How finicky do you think a 15-16 year is about that sort of thing? We even thought David Hasselhoff was some sort of master thespian in Knight Rider for goodness sake. Some gratuitous helicopter scenes and some shooting would've probably at least kept our interest, maybe a plot or two that actually made us care about the characters even though we all knew that the show had jumped the shark... But no, they had to turn it into a trashy, soap-opera style drama with a bit of Airwolf thrown into the mix. Rubbish, I did NOT watch it more than a couple of times.

The original series were cancelled from tv, because the actor that played Stringfellow Hawke made a lot of trouble on the set and in his personal life. They didn't want to continue it. A very small other station bought over the rights of the series and continued the filming. The original refused to work further on it, because they knew that there wasn't enough money to keep up the quality of the series.

Watch the original series from 1984-1987!!

The USA version of Airwolf was a huge disappointment. I categorize this with Battlestar Galatica 1980, another dismal TV sequel also featuring the great acting talents of Barry VanDyke.

The characters from the original were killed off or written out to lighten the financial burden of reviving the show. Aerial footage was for the most part recycled from the original show, which, like Battlestar Galactica, recycled plenty of its own footage.

To further decrease costs, it appears that they shot on videotape rather than film resulting in a lower production quality look.

Airwolf went from sci-fi drama to Saturday morning cartoon. Keep this one in the vault please.

Argh!