From June 1983: The Hoff, and K.I.T.T turbo boost onto the front cover of a slightly battered copy of TV GUIDE magazine.
The Glen Larson creation had made its debut on NBC the previous September.
The series ran for four seasons, wrapping in April '86. CODE OF VENGENCE was a blink-and-you-missed-it (especially in the UK where it was never imported) spin-off that aired sporadically in 1985-86. Two TV movies (KNIGHT RIDER 2000 and the all-but-unrelated KNIGHT RIDER 2010) hit screens in the following decade. Universal's first-run syndication people figured 'more is more' by launching TEAM KNIGHT RIDER in 1997. Viewers on both sides of the Atlantic chose to look the other way. Another TV movie aired, to greater fanfare, in 2008 followed by a weekly series which couldn't keep the viewers coming back.
Various movie revivals were mooted by Hasselhoff, Larson and others over the decades but - to date - nothing has actually gone in front of the cameras. Yet another small-screen version is apparently currently in production... demonstrating that a thin premise ('car talks so that the actor doesn't need to really act... and can be replaced if thay ask for a rise') really can go a long way.
Hey Slow, just catching up now with your recent posts. As always, some very interesting stuff going up here.
ReplyDeleteI was sorry but not surprised to hear about the demise of GEEKY MONKEY. The recent cover logo change was the death knell. And tbh, the latest cover is awful, certainly not befitting a final issue.
I found some material on the balled of halo jones which can be seen here :
http://zenade.angelfire.com/HJ/index.album/halo-jones-play-a5-flyer?i=9