Review for Street Hawk: The Complete Series (Review)
Thursday, 11th March 2010, 17:57

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Introduction
They cancel all my favourite shows! Well, most shows wind up cancelled anyway, so perhaps I should have added ‘prematurely’ as well. Most recently, I’ve had to say goodbye to the rebooted Knight Rider, Dollhouse, and a show that was right up my street, Defying Gravity. But it’s a pattern that has repeated all of my life now, with shows like Matt Houston, the original Battlestar Galactica, Space Above and Beyond, Highwayman, Tales of the Gold Monkey, Blue Thunder, and Best of the West never making it past the first season. Some shows did get a decent bite of the apple, but were constantly surfing the wave of cancellation. It took Quantum Leap four years to wipe-out, as did Farscape, and Babylon 5 actually rushed its ending into season 4, and then an unexpected renewal gave the writers another season to fill. Perhaps the most famous cancelled series of all is Star Trek, and then there is Baywatch. No, bear with me. Baywatch actually died after season 1, and it’s season 1 that I love. It had characters, it had storylines, it had great music and great cinematography, and no one loved it. So they ditched the storylines and characters, inserted Pamela Anderson and hours of slow-mo silicone and the rest is history. I couldn’t take it; I gave up after four or five years of that. It’s always the bottom line. I like the concept shows, but concept shows cost more money, so they are the first to be canned.

It’s pretty cutthroat now in the world of television, the recession has resulted in some pretty fierce battle for airtime, and with reality TV cheap to produce, it means that a lot of shows fall like flies when it comes to totting up the bottom line. Just outside Hollywood is a graveyard where the dead shows are buried, only for cult TV fans and DVD producers to try and resurrect them. There was a recession on in the eighties as well, and even without reality TV, shows were axed with ruthless brutality. And as per usual, they always went after the shows that I loved the most. The hero with the technological piece of kit was a mainstay of the schedules back then, and while battle was joined in the sky between Airwolf and Blue Thunder, the streets were left to Knight Rider, The Littlest Hobo and Street Hawk to contest. I’m lying about The Littlest Hobo. But of all the tech-shows of the period, I loved Street Hawk the most. Even now it’s more golden in my memories than it is in reality. I still have the second novelisation Cons At Large on my bookshelf, and besides, Street Hawk got a comic strip in Look-In. Once a show has managed that, it has arrived. It’s up there with Knight Rider and Dukes of Hazzard. My memory assured me that there were three or four seasons of Street Hawk, at least. So when The Complete Series of Street Hawk was announced, I pounced on the review discs… Thirteen episodes. Just thirteen episodes before it was cancelled. I’d pay good money to kick a Hollywood exec up the backside!

Street Hawk fulfils the 80’s action hero stereotype. One man can make a difference, as long as he has the right vehicle at his command. Jesse Mach was a motorcycle cop of unparalleled ability, until a run in with a drug dealer destroyed his knee and left him with a desk job in public relations. You can’t keep a man like that down for long, especially when he’s been targeted by a government project to pilot an All-Terrain Attack Motorcycle in the urban environment, to prove its peacekeeping and crime fighting capabilities. Everyone thinks it’s a good idea, except the brains behind the project, Norman Tuttle, engineer extraordinaire. Norman thinks that Jesse is too reckless, but his superiors have spoken, and so it is that Norman reluctantly approaches Jesse with an offer. A new crime-fighting vigilante takes to the street, and an unconventional partnership is born.

The thirteen episodes are presented across 4 discs, and there are some juicy extras as well to be had.

Disc 1

1. The Pilot
His best friend is murdered, and he’s left for dead in the desert, but worse is to come for motorbike cop Jesse Mach. His knee destroyed, he’s left in the police’s PR department, and he learns that his friend’s case has been passed on to Internal Affairs, where it has quickly been buried and forgotten. But Federal Agent Norman Tuttle has an offer to make, revolutionary surgery can repair Jesse’s knee, if he’ll agree to pilot a new urban pacification prototype. Street Hawk is a radical new motorcycle, capable of speeds up to 300mph, amazing acrobatics, and armed with lethal and non-lethal weaponry. But it will have to be a secret; Jesse will have to maintain the pretence of being a limping PR cop by day, so that he can be a masked vigilante by night. First on their target list is a drug smuggler whose modus operandi is to steal the best quality confiscated drugs from police lock-up. But Jesse still wants to nail the guy who murdered his friend.

2. A Second Self
Street Hawk is already making an impression on crime in the city, although when a car thief ends up dead as a result, it’s the wrong impression. A crooked dealership steals flash cars to order, and the dead thief was the owner’s brother. Now the owner wants revenge, he’s setting a trap for Street Hawk, and he’s hired in professional help from the outside. At the same time, Jesse’s friend Kevin Stark is in town. The two of them used to ride the competition circuit together, and they take the time to reminisce and have a friendly race or two while Kevin isn’t at work. You see he’s been hired by the owner of a car dealership…

3. The Adjuster
It seems a simple job, a stakeout of a warehouse, and the arrest of a couple of thieves, and the fence they try to hawk their stolen jewels to. But Elkins is no simple fence, he’s wanted in New York, and it isn’t long before a rock-chewing, hard-bitten, thug of a New York Cop is in town to take Elkins of the LAPD’s hands. Detective Joe Cannon wasn’t expecting the mild-mannered accountant to give him the slip, and it then falls to Jesse to partner him until the fugitive can be recaptured. It’s hate at first sight. But Cannon isn’t exactly what he seems.

Disc 2

4. Vegas Run
Typical! You’re a Vegas showgirl who falls in love with the wrong guy. The wrong guy turns out to be a mobster who doesn’t take too kindly to you testifying against him, so you go on the run to Los Angeles, to hide out with your kid sister. Except the mob goons get there first. Just when the bullets are about to fly, a cop and his nerd best friend rescue you. Then it gets really weird.

5. Dog Eat Dog
Jesse’s under orders from fellow PR cop Rachel to obtain the services of rock star Deborah Shane for an infomercial. The problem is that she doesn’t like cops. But when there’s blackmail going on at RJ Records, and she becomes a witness to a murder, she’ll have to rely on the cops to save her life, well, one cop in particular.

6. Fire on the Wing
There’s a hi-tech protection racket in operation now. Warehouses from various companies are being set alight in arson attacks, with no evidence being left behind, and even Street Hawk with its Hyperthrust velocity is unable to catch the perpetrators in the act. It doesn’t help when the business sector is stonewalling the police. Chief among them is Will Gasner, whose distrust of the police is paranoiac. But it doesn’t stop him trying to poach away Rachel from the PR department, while his daughter Diana is a lot friendlier towards Jesse.

7. Chinatown Memories
The crime syndicates in Chinatown are on the verge of a civil war, and all because of an ivory statue. It doesn’t help that the statue has been stolen by one Joe Ching, who wants to return it to its proper place in Shanghai. It’s not the sort of situation that the police can blunder into, and when Jesse’s ex-girlfriend Lily shows up, asking for help, he realises that he needs Street Hawk’s delicate touch. With this old flame re-ignited, this may just be the time to retire from the vigilante business, but there’s something that Lily is keeping secret.

Disc 3

8. The Unsinkable 453
It’s not much of a prison break when no one escapes, and an attack on a prison bus just seems like a monumental screw up. Street Hawk knows better, having seen one man make his escape, but when that same man dies in prison a few days later, Jesse realises that he can’t investigate through regular police channels. But his isn’t the only investigation, as Rachel is getting closer to Street Hawk’s true identity.

9. Hot Target
Street Hawk interrupts an arms deal that’s in the middle of turning sour; when the potential buyer of a multi-million dollar anti-tank laser balks at the price rise, he gets an intimate demonstration of its abilities. The problem is that Marpell Industries makes the laser, a formerly peaceful and philanthropic medical research company. But Jesse and Norman have a way into the secretive company, Norman’s ex Mona works there as head of research, and Norman wants to know how she could be involved in something so nefarious.

10. Murder is a Novel Idea
Street Hawk is working a jewellery heist, but the police have bigger problems. Famed crime-writer Stephanie Craig is about to release her first work of non-fiction, where she claims to name the murderer of Rosemary Farelly, citing police incompetence 20 years previously. Norman’s a massive fan, but Stephanie used to work for the police, and she and Jesse had a thing once upon a time. The trouble is that certain people aren’t all that thrilled about the forthcoming book, and are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the murderer’s identity from being divulged.

11. The Arabian
Racehorses are worth a lot of money, certainly worth more than a human life, at least for one unscrupulous owner. It’s not good for business when an $8 million horse has to be put down, so an insurance scheme is hatched. But the owner hasn’t counted on the insurance agent being a PI, and he hasn’t counted on the intervention of Street Hawk.

Disc 4

12. Female of the Species
Heir to the wealthy and powerful Cavanaugh family, Steve Cavanaugh is in town, and with his arrival comes a host of death threats, and a full FBI protection team. It isn’t enough to stop an assassination attempt at the airport, only Street Hawk can manage that, and Jesse finds himself in the middle of a turf war between Agent Menlo and Commander Altobelli. The terrorists keep on coming, but for some odd reason, they keep missing the target.

13. Follow The Yellow Gold Road
There’s a bunch of thieves carrying out a series of gold heists that Street Hawk can’t keep up with, Jesse gets a taste of his own medicine when the Citizens Action Group start dealing out vigilante justice of their own, even claiming Street Hawk as a friend, and Jesse’s out there alone, with no Norman for back up, as the phone company have dug up all the cables that link the command centre to the outside world.

Picture
Street Hawk gets an NTSC transfer from Fabulous Films, which is a bit of a disappointment (probably because this very same package will be released in the US in July). Street Hawk was one of those early-mid-eighties shows that were shot on film, and there’s no reason other than financial that a film-PAL transfer couldn’t have happened. As it is, those of us still using 25-year-old televisions from the period of the show will be out of luck. The image is a mixed bag, although generally clear and sharp throughout. There is a smidge of print damage, but not as much as you would think from a show of this vintage. I guess Street Hawk didn’t see a lot of reruns. Occasionally the image softens a bit, as if switching to a videotape source, but by and large this is pretty decent quality and very watchable. The effects have dated the most, with Hyperthrust looking laughable now, although not as ridiculous as the back flip in the pilot episode.

Sound
Hark your minds back to the summer of 1985, when TVs were still available in wood, had curved screens and channel knobs to twist, and a sole speaker existed at the side of the cabinet to adequately relay the tinny mono sound from the analogue transmission. The Street Hawk boxset tries its best to replicate that, with a DD 2.0 mono English soundtrack, but it hasn’t taken modern technology into account, where even the most basic of televisions give it a clarity and dynamic range that it just didn’t have back when originally broadcast. Of course that means that Tangerine Dream’s electronica soundtrack sounds better than before. I can’t say the same for the pop music in the show that delayed this set’s release. It was music clearance issues that were the sticking point, and it seems that not all the music could be cleared. Certainly one Bruce Springsteen track in an early episode sounded more like it came from the Matalan cover-version playlist.

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