Street Hawk ~ The complete promotion of dangerous driving.

Back in the mid-1980s American TV finally achieved something it had been threatening to do for years, it reached the upper peaks of cheesiness. Television viewers the world over thought that peak had been reached with both the A-Team and Airwolf, but those shows while being inherently cheesy had a few qualities that lifted them into the lower echelons of comedy drama. But with Street Hawk the TV executives had struck the golden cheese!

It was bad, so terribly bad, yet I loved it. I suppose back in the 80s I loved anything to do with speed (still do I guess), and I was fascinated by the idea of detective work, whether that be by the police or a genius P.I. TV shows like TJ Hooker, CHiPs, Magnum P.I and The Fall Guy were all favourites of mine. Street Hawk combined the 2 and thus was instant success in my juvenile mind.

Basically Street Hawk was about a police officer and his pet, top secret government motorbike. This was a bike designed to go fast, now you may say that all bikes are designed for that, however Street Hawk was so fast that it could fucking outrace the Starship Enterprise! At warp 10! And with the guy riding it looking in no danger of ever falling off. In fact our hero looked so relaxed while riding the bike he could have been chilling in his favourite armchair with his morning newspaper instead of travelling at ridiculous speeds and enduring insane amounts of G force.

This is Jesse Mach, an ex-motorcycle cop, injured in the line of duty. Now a police troubleshooter, he's been recruited for a top secret government mission to ride Street Hawk--an all-terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime, capable of incredible speeds up to three hundred miles an hour...and immense firepower. Only one man, federal agent Norman Tuttle, knows Jesse Mach's true identity. The man...the machine...Street Hawk.

There we have the introduction to our hero, all around American nice guy Mr Jesse Mach. This introduction always followed on from the opening theme music:

If you’ve read any of my earlier blog posts, you’ll know just how much I enjoyed the theme music.

What isn’t said above is that while Jesse Mach is a police officer by day, at night when out breaking light speed records he’s a friggin’ vigilante, and his own daytime boss wants to arrest him. Said boss doesn’t know that one of his underlings is the ruthless vigilante motorcycle warrior. Well obviously otherwise he’d just slap the cuffs on him when he arrived for work in the morning and bitch slap him a few times just for the trouble he’s caused.

You have to wonder though, if he’s pulling a full shift during the day and riding around like a one man army at night, when does he find the time to sleep? Is Jesse Mach actually A) a robot, B) possessed by his own bike or C) a shit police officer who sleeps on the job? Due to America cancelling the show we’ll never know the answer. I like option B personally, so I’ll let myself stick with that explanation.

So there we have Street Hawk, a man possessed by a bike to hunt down criminals, while evading the law and acting like a criminal.

The A-Team provide life lessons

“If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can remember them, maybe you can hire the A-Team”

It all began back during the days of the Vietnam War (way before even I was born); some soldiers did something rather silly and got themselves arrested. You automatically think of Americans when a statement like that is made, don’t you? Apologies to any and all Americans who might read that and sue me for defamation of character and what not.

Lets begin again…

In 1972 a team of crap crack commandos were sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit. Hold on a moment, before continuing on I have to ask - how do we know they didn't do said crime? I mean all we ever really have is their word and they are men who know how to use bloody guns, if they say they’re innocent most sane and reasonable people will nod and say they believe them! But anyways, back on track. They were sent down for a crime they “didn’t” commit. For punishment they got thrown into a maximum security military prison and, being our heroes they managed to escape. Now see this gets me wondering again, either our four main guys are more badass than we realised (and got arrested just for shits and giggles), or their prison was about as secure as a Wendy house. I think I’m leaning in the direction of explanation number two here. So they escape and promptly hide out somewhere in Los Angeles, which isn't a bad choice really as apparently, a herd of dinosaurs could hide out in L.A. and never be discovered. Deciding that they need money (well they’re on the run from the law and all criminals on the lam need a steady supply of cash), they choose to go into the soldier of fortune business (a rapid growth industry back in the 70’s - 80’s), and advertise their services in the classified sections of every newspaper on the face of the Earth. Good decision making there boys, no military police officers are ever going to suspect who you are when they see your ad in between the landscape gardening and dog grooming adverts.

Before we go any further let’s introduce ourselves to the A-Team, soldiers of fortune and supposedly all around good eggs.

"I love it when a plan comes together."

Here we have the main man himself, Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith. Master of disguise, cigar chomper extraordinaire and lover of plans coming together. He favours wearing white jackets and black leather gloves and is known to grin like a lunatic on meds (see: Murdoch) when things go his way.

"I lie, I cheat, I steal and I just don't get any respect."

Next up in front of us is Lieutenant Templeton “The Faceman” Peck, or just Face to his buddies. Face is the man who can get anything at any time from anywhere, unless it’s something useful that you actually need then he’s about as useful as a chocolate fire-guard. Face likes to appear suave and is rarely seen without female company.

"I'm a bird! I'm a plane! I'm a choo-choo train!"

Grinning at us now (and I guess making us all nervous) is Captain H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock. The man who can fly anything, and I mean anything! He has been known to take joy rides on a paper airplane around the confines of his padded cell. Murdock likes nothing more than annoying his friends and extolling the virtues of a glass of milk.

"I ain't gettin' on no plane Hannibal!"

And finally we come to Sergeant First Class Bosco “B.A.” Baracus. This man must be the strongest man in the world and surely the only sentient being who’s ever harboured suspicions about an innocent glass of milk. B.A. likes gold, lots and lots and lots of gold; he probably has more gold around his neck than Fort Knox has in its vaults.

So now we've met our heroes and we know how they got to be where they are (well, we know their version). So what is it they now do? What exactly is soldier of fortuning? Or soldiering of fortune? Well evidently it’s about helping the weak, oppressed and frankly naïve population of America in their struggles against crooks, thugs and other unsavoury types, all the while imparting morality and good old fashioned working class ethics on the unsuspecting viewing public. And who said ultra-violent, yet strangely bloodless, trashy action shows couldn't educate people?

I'm going to describe a basic episode here, it’s all made up from my imagination, but I'm sure you've all seen the various A-Team equivalents. At least I hope you've seen it, I'm going on the assumption here that everyone reading has had almost constant access to a TV and hasn't been living in a TV-less world were the only form of entertainment is counting pocket lint.

Anyhow…

Random redneck townsperson A is being threatened by random redneck thugs A,B and C. D is looking on menacingly chewing on a toothpick. The threats are probably some form of extortion; they usually are in your typical A-Team episode.

Random redneck townsperson A moans and whinges to random redneck townsperson B, and sometimes C if the producers could afford a lot of extras. Together our group of oppressed random rednecks scour the classifieds, looking for men with guns to drive in and save the day. Smart-ass comments and pithy one-liners are a must.

A meeting is arranged and random redneck(s) get in their rusty old car(s) and drive off to a fairground (sometimes it’s the beach). There they are met by a giant latex clown (I can’t remember seeing Hannibal in a giant latex clown outfit, but I'm pretty damn sure he had one).

The random rednecks pour out their woes to the giant latex clown and ask it if it knows where to find the A-Team. Just as an aside here, would you trust anyone who wore a few pounds of latex on a stupidly hot day? Me neither! Sidetracked again, sorry. After listening sympathetically the giant latex clown pops open a panel somewhere on its upper body and the face of Hannibal Smith appears, lights up a cigar, chomps a bit and informs them he and his boys will help out.

Cue the really cool intro music:

We have a few quick fire scenes here. First off is a few random redneck thugs getting all macho and tough with a group of random redneck townspeople, then we have the first real A-Team action scene of the day. Murdock, as viewers will remember, lives in a mental hospital (because he’s a loon obviously), and because our team can’t function very well as a threesome they have to come up with a cunning plan to break Murdock free for a few days. This usually involves Face posing as a doctor and B.A. posing as a taxi driver (he’s driving something, he can do the taxi driver pose).

With Murdock (un)safely back among the general population our team head off for the random redneck village, the four messed up horsemen of the apocalypse.

Within seconds of driving down random redneck town’s high street, Hannibal and the boys not only know who the big, aggravating boss is, they know everything he’s ever done wrong, even down to the aggressive way he used to play kiss-chase at the local primary school.

Hannibal, Face, Murdock and B.A. meet up with a few of the respectable elder random redneck townspeople, and they do the verbal equivalent of a group hug, Face makes eyes at some pretty girl (probably called Daisy or Mary Sue), then they head off to a bar. You have to understand, it has to be a bar. Nowhere else can show the confrontational ambience of small-town America other than an all American bar.

In the bar the head redneck thug is shooting some pool (usually winning, because thugs the world over are brown nosers and want to suck up). The comic relief bit happens here, when Hannibal and the head redneck thug trade enough witty one-liners to make a circuit comedian go green with envy. Suffice to say nothing gets resolved (these guys really are shit negotiators) and Hannibal is now free to devise one of his cunning plans (I don’t know about the rest of you, but I'm wondering if Hannibal can count Baldric among his ancestors?)

Before the gang leave the bar though, they must have the obligatory fist fight with the redneck thugs. The fight follows a fairly predictable routine. Hannibal, despite looking a few centuries older than most of the guys he‘s fighting, manages to beat his opponents down with a variety of brutal and flashy moves (and never losing his cigar). Murdock acts all crazy (well, he doesn't need to act) and barring throwing the odd jab around doesn't accomplish much. Face, being perceived as the weakest guy alive generally has a few big, hefty thugs surrounding him, and despite being a highly trained special operations soldier he still manages to get beaten on by a group of lads who can all probably claim that their sister is their mother … and they’re all brothers. B.A. meanwhile just stands there, letting each and every one of his assailants punch the foot thick armour-plating of gold chains that cover his chest (why they ignore his unprotected face is anyone’s guess), then when they’re all stood around holding their hands he throws them contemptuously about the room. He’s so talented he can even throw them in slow-mo.

The team leave the bar and climb into the van. Now the A-Team van is surely the coolest motor vehicle ever to appear on screen (even better than the cars shown in The Dukes of Hazzard and Starsky and Hutch). It’s an indestructible fighting machine, a mobile war office and the bearer of the world’s largest personal weapons armoury. The van is the fifth member of the A-Team.

So they've made their plans. Hannibal has chomped a few cigars down to brown mulch. Now they are ready to go to war.

Sometimes, if we’re especially lucky, we’ll get a scene involving some sort of flying machine. It makes sense really as Murdock is the best pilot in the world, now and forever. I'm pretty convinced, though, that the only reason these scenes were included was to educate young people on the importance of having a regular calcium intake. I mean we've already seen that B.A. is afraid of precisely nothing (well we have if we’re actually watching the show rather than reading my unaired episode), and now we’re expected to believe that B.A. is afraid of flying? I'm sorry but I can’t accept that. With any other mere mortal I could, but this is B.A. Baracus the toughest man alive. He ass fucks Chuck Norris twice before breakfast. Therefore I can only deduce that the powers that be saw he was the perfect role model and asked him to have this one (unrealistic) weakness in order to show the watching kids that drinking milk at any time was good for you. The sedatives were just a convenience.

We are treated now to various scenes of no real importance to the plot (usually scenes of Face making out with Daisy or Mary Sue).

But then we are treated to scenes of real genius. The scenes that every kid was glued to the TV for on a Saturday afternoon. The scenes of capture and subsequent escape.

You see what happens (in every bloody episode) is that something has gone wrong with the plan. The head redneck thug and his band of merry minions have somehow managed to capture Hannibal and the team. All the random redneck townspeople are depressed by this turn of events, understandably so given that the team of “professional” soldiers they've hired have been captured by a group of people who failed auditions for Deliverance.

But all is not lost. Our heroes (in true A-Team style) are imprisoned in a really large warehouse, fully stocked up with; wood, metal, power tools, spare tyres, gas canisters and some form of root vegetable, not to mention that the redneck thugs have failed to learn from history and have neglected to cut the power to the “warehouse prison”.

What follows is the biggest exercise in ingenuity you are ever likely to see, as the A-Team use all the materials they find and construct a worthy replication of a Challenger tank. This is why this show was more educational than anything else on TV at this point, it proved that if you used your brains and common sense, and if you just had access to a solitary plug point, you could turn a simple cabbage into a weapon of mass destruction. Learning with violent entertainment, if only schools would go that way now!

With the cabbage cannon (or whichever root vegetable they are using as ammunition), the A-Team are able to defeat the redneck army and their arsenal of automatic weapons. Miraculously enough nobody dies, or is even wounded. Either the people on this show are the worst marksmen in history, or the guns they have just shoot bubbles shaped like bullets. I’ll let you form your own opinions there.

Anyhow, Hannibal, Face, Murdock and B.A. have won. The oppressed redneck townspeople are free from their redneck thuggish oppressors, a victory for morality you may say.

I have to say though, other than Face having plenty of sex (fortunately not seen on camera), how do Hannibal and the team get paid for their efforts? Do they get paid cash so they can avoid taxes? Numbered Swiss bank accounts? Or do they have bank accounts in false names so they can access them without too much fiddling around?  I guess we’ll never know as the economics of being a soldier of fortune is never really explained.

There we go though, that’s how a particular episode of the A-Team generally goes. I'm sure you’ll all agree, once you've taken off the nostalgia glasses, that it’s just complete unbelievable trash TV. Best off left to the decade in which it emerged.

And we’re all probably right!

*****

What it all boils down to really is that this programme was pure fun. Sure, it wasn't Oscar or Emmy award winning brilliance, but it was light-hearted, and more often than not it had a decent moral message that kids could understand. And it was entertaining, and what more do we want from a TV show?

Thanks for reading, hope you all enjoyed.

TV theme music FTW

It's raining today, so I'm bored and can't really go out (not that I was planning to go out anyways, but still). So rather than doing something productive like changing the bedding or vacuuming the dog, I'm just gonna sit in front of YouTube all day.

While I'm on YouTube I thought why not look for theme music for some of my favourite TV shows. And after doing that I thought why not make a blog post about my top 10.

Since I can't resist the allure of inflicting nostalgic memories on people, here we go with my top 10 intro themes from shows I loved when growing up.

At number 10 we have Knight Rider, a show about The Hoff and a talking car. The premise was cool and to a young lad the show was cool ('cause every growing boy loves a talking car that can do everything apart from your chores), and the intro theme music was just, well, cool.

In at number 9 we have Streethawk. A classic TV show about a bike that could travel at warp speed! Without the guy riding it ever falling off!! How fucking awesome is that? And the theme music was pretty damn great as well, it got into your head and you'd find yourself humming it as you wandered to school and back.

Star Trek: The Next Generation makes it in at number 8. Could I really call myself a geek if I didn't like some Star Trek? With this version gone was the cheesiness of the 60's original and in came 80's cheese and good moral values. And the theme music is still the best Star Trek theme music ever!

Number 7, but could so easily have been number 1 on a different day is the brilliant Airwolf. Pure helicopter awesomeness! The first 3 seasons with Jan Michael Vincent are the best, the 4th season had some guy named Barry in the lead role, less said there the better. And the intro music is still some of the best music on a TV show ever.

Number 6 is the original Battlestar Galactica. Without a doubt the revamped version is probably the better show, but the original version beats it hands down for it's opening music. It's epic in every sense of the word, far better than the bullshit "music" they used for the new version.

Here we go with number 5, and a theme song so great I just had to have it for my iPod. It is of course The Littlest Hobo, a show about possibly the greatest dog in the history of dogs! Fuck you Lassie, you may be more famous, but you ain't half as cool as London!

 

Number 4. And you knew that this show would be somewhere on this list, because no list of TV show intro's would be complete without the A-Team around. As soon as those awesome opening credits start, you know you're in for a treat, and with Hannibal and his boys you get full satisfaction!

Entering in at number 3 on my list, another theme track that could have made number. It's the theme music for one of the great TV shows of all time, Quantum Leap. I remember my sister and I would watch this religiously, just to see what or who Dr Sam Beckett had become this week. If you've never seen Quantum Leap then you need to give yourself a slap and then get some serious TV time in!

In at number 2 now is the classic 80's show The Fall Guy. Lee Majors made being a stuntman look like the job every boy should aspire to, though our attempts to emulate him usually ended up with grazed knees, bruises and tears as we fell over fences and whatnot. As for the theme, well, I want this song, I am going to make it my life's mission to have this song! It's that cool!

NUMBER 1. The single greatest TV show of all time!!! It's Macgyver. The A-Team need power tools and a fully stocked warehouse to make their weapons, Michael Knight needs a talking car to help him out when he's in trouble. Macgyver needs no ones help whatsoever and give him a ball of string and a box of matches and he'll make a weapon the A-Team can only dream of! Macgyver is the man whom Chuck Norris worships as a living god. And the theme music is genius, I could sit here all day and listen and grin like a fucking idiot. I may possibly be getting a tad excited here, so I'm just going to head off to Amazon and see if I can purchase all 7 seasons of this TV work of art.

Well that's my list of great TV theme music and inserted YouTube clips. You may disagree if you like, but this is my blog, so blah!