Knight Rider

To men of a certain age, David Hasselhoff will forever be the epitome of leather jump-suited cool and absolutely not a washed-up alcoholic who’s never quite lived down that claim to have single-handedly dismantled the Berlin Wall. And sure enough, The Hoff crops up for a cameo at the end of this series opener, albeit in a scene emitting a more pungent stench of cheese than a 60-year-old slab of Stinking Bishop.

Hoffheads will doubtless have serious reservations about this Knight Rider remake, which aired in the US last year. To a certain extent, they’d be right to – but that’s not to say this two-hour pilot is awful. It’s just that after a reasonably entertaining opening, complete with the obligitory high-octane car chases, edge-of-the-seat casino showdowns and a bit of Man v Cold-Hearted Machine banter, it all becomes a little tedious.

Of course, there’s some serious suspension of belief required from the word go. One has to wonder whether the Pentagon would really allow its head boffin to store the top secret Project Prometheus at home on his PC, for example. Needless to say, when evil crooks dressed as blokes from the Electricity Board turn up as his door, his bosses probably regretted that decision to let him sit on the sofa watching Loose Women in his underpants and drinking endless cups of tea instead of coming into the office. [So that’s what you do when you say you’re “working from home” – Ed.]

For the reboot, KITT’s slightly camp voice has been replaced by the gooey-as-molasses tones of Val Kilmer, and the car itself is now a product placement-tastic Ford Mustang. Other jarring attempts to bring the show into the naughties include a few gratuitous bikini shots of Sydney Tamiia Poitier, and making her character a lesbian. Is Knight Rider doing its bit for same-sex relationships, or just pandering to the fantasies of pock-marked adolescent males? You decide.

by Stewart Turner, Friday 8 May 2009