The Man-Cave Remembers: STREET HAWK

The Man...The Machine...STREET HAWK!

Early to mid-1980's television will always be remembered for being saturated with one-hour action programming about super vehicles. Networks threw whatever they could at the wall to see what stuck. For every A-Team, there was a Riptide. For every Knight Rider and Airwolf, there was a Blue Thunder. As you can see, not all of these shows went on to have multiple seasons and made their claim to memorable 80's pop culture, but there was one show that did not deserve a fading into obscurity, even though it has held a cult status to this very day. That show is 1985's Street Hawk.

Jesse Mach (70's & 80's heartthrob Rex Smith) was a motorcycle cop severely injured by some bad guys and destined to desk work forever due to his knee ailment. Not only was his partner and friend killed off by the same criminals who ran him over, but he also lost the ability to retain the hotshot motorcyclist expert lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. That is until he was approached by Norman Tuttle (Murphy Brown's Joe Regalbuto), a genius government tech agent leading the top secret operation entitled Street Hawk, a super motorcycle that would be used to fight crime vigilante-style and unbeknownst to the local Los Angeles police force. Even  though Tuttle was originally against the idea, his boss targeted Mach as the perfect candidate with the skills and personality needed to make the Hawk operation successful. After undergoing a new prosthetic surgery to correct his knee and cycle training under Tuttle's tutelage, Mach used Street Hawk to avenge his partner's death and his own attempted murder by a drug dealing criminal (Christopher Lloyd...yup good ol' Doc Brown) and some shady police officials. In superhero-esque fashion, Mach would both keep his LAPD public relations position to remain in the know of all police happenings as well as his "limp" to nullify any ties to him being the police-given moniker Street Hawk. And that was all just in the pilot!

The leads

The pilot episode was as good as any TV pilot back then. It was action-packed and did not spend too much useless time before Jesse Mach got on the bike and started tearing up the streets of L.A. Beginning with the second episode, the series followed the standard "villain of the week" formula with no series-wide arch. Unfortunately, this might have been the show's undoing. Although entertaining, there was no endgame to the premise. There was no "Sam Beckett Quantum Leap-ing trying to get home" or "The A-Team trying to clear their name with the military". Mach also instantly went from P.R. rep in the pilot to a detective in the second episode with no explanation why or how. He also lost the limp, which was his cover. They should have stuck with that neat little idea, but instead they made him a hard-nosed detective and not as much of the enjoyable cool showoff he portrayed in the pilot. 

Even though Street Hawk was ABC's answer to NBC's Knight Rider, it really tried not be its clone. Instead, the creators ditched any camp by being a little more serious, evident in the large body count throughout all of the episodes. That's right...good or bad, a lot of people died. Mach was not interested in incarcerating criminals and more concerned with killing them dead by rarely "missing" with his weapons. Ever want to see George Clooney get whacked? Watch the second episode. At the same time, the show tried to come across a little more hip with all demographics of the 80's audience. Girls still thought Smith was dreamy, dudes liked the action and kids were enchanted by the motorcycle - which was totally tubular to the max.

Clooney bites it!

In the show, the Street Hawk bike reached 200 MPH and 300 MPH using the hyperthrust mode. It was armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and a laser cannon. It also came equipped with a vertical lift/jump system, both on and off road capabilities and an infrared camera. Pretty sweet, huh? In reality, three bikes were used to being the Street Hawk model to life. A 1983 Honda XL500 was employed for the pilot, while the rest of the series used 1984 Honda XR500's and stunts scenes used Honda CR250's. (courtesy of streethawkonline.com) Even though it was just extremely sped up film stock used for the effect, the hyperthrust sequences became a trademark of the show because the effect's outcome looked so sleek. 

The chemistry between leads Smith and Regalbuto was very good, playing the whole "odd couple" angle. Mach was daring and threw caution to the wind while Tuttle was conservative and always more concerned with his precious bike. However, they needed each other equally since Street Hawk was, at Tuttle put it, so complex that two people were mandatory to operate it. Mach did the driving and heroics, but Tuttle played dependable navigator and operated the Hyper Thrust option from his command center. This led to some comical back and forth conversation between the two through their communication system. Mach was the brawn and Tuttle was the brains. Just how smart was Tuttle? He came up with the idea for the Internet and Google in the fourth episode, wishing there was way to type someone's name in and have everything about them pop up on your screen. No joke.

Hyperthrust

Each episode was filled with popular 80's top-10 tracks, but the synthesizer score by Tangerine Dream was the tangible that paced the show and provided it with its character. The theme song itself is truly a marvel of the 80's action shows, much like Airwolf and Knight Rider.

 

Alas, the show only lasted one season of 13 total episodes before cancellation, which was not due to poor ratings. According to a recent Street Hawk documentary, network politics got it bounced to Friday nights, a notoriously lame time slot and against powerhouse Dallas no less, instead of the Monday Night Football lead-in slot it was created for (which wound up going to MacGyver). ABC wanted to go another direction with that time slot plus they didn't want to keep coughing up a reported $1 million per episode. At least that is their story, although the show could have really benefited from the previously mentioned idea of a  series-wide arch as to not become stale. Nevertheless, it was an exciting show that should be remembered as an enjoyable product of the 80's worth re-visiting if you watched it during its first run or checking it out if this is the first you have heard of it. You can get it on Amazon for less than $20, well worth the price tag.

It even got a couple versions of video games

SHOW OPENING:




CHECK IT OUT:

Streethawkonline.com - the definitive archive of all that is Street Hawk!

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