All-new Knight Rider: without The Hoff?!

Andrew Mickel

Knight Rider without The Hoff? Andrew offers his dismay, and wonders what other 80s action fantasies could be brought up to date - Daniel Radcliffe as Manimal, anyone?

Published on Oct 10, 2007

Transformers was at worst a migraine of shaky, ambigious colour, and at best two hours of shiny bot-fighting. No-one came out of it feeling inspired. No-one, that is, apart from producer Doug Liman.

With shiny anthropo-cars now in fashion, NBC decided to bring back Knight Rider – sans the Hoff. Why? Well, cheese-laden family action fantasy has apparently fallen to us Brits, between Doctor Who and surprise export hit Robin Hood. All American TV of the ilk has to be darkened up and smothered in contemporary issue-led sub-texts about the war on terror, civil liberties and happy-slapping (probably). And the Hoff doesn’t really ‘do’ social awareness.

I kind of, sort of, almost understand why the Hoff couldn't be Michael Knight. So why not let him be Kitt's voice? The original Kitt, for those who don't remember, was voiced by the wise-crackin' tones of Mr Feeny out of Boy Meets World, played by William Daniels.

Chances are that Liman will instead bring us some faux-soldier voice like those who did Transformers, so bland you couldn't pick it out of a vocal chord line-up. As anyone who has seen America's Got Talent (what do you mean, you don't watch ITV2?) will know, if the contemporary Hoff was Kitt then he'd be perving on middle-aged lady-cars (probably a Peugeot 206), laughing at the mentally ill, and running over Piers Morgan.

So if Knight Rider exists without the Hoff, which other 80s action fantasies can be brought bang up to date with new casts?

Daniel Radcliffe IS Manimal
Don’t get me wrong, the boy wizard would be terrible. He can neither act nor have any fun with a role. But importantly, it would stop him going near the Bond franchise, which now he’s declared an interest must be done at all costs. If someone gets to Manimal first, we can give him…um…what 80s formats have we got left? Roseanne. That’ll do.

Al Gore stars in Knight Rider.
Oh, we've already done that. Okay, Team Knight Rider. Because NBC are toying with the idea of introducing ‘evil cars’ to Knight Rider. So why not remake the outstandingly awful 90s revisit to Knight Rider (think Power Rangers meets Top Gear) and make it all social-consciousy at the same time? Al Gore could drive a Toyota Prius, and every week we could learn new ways to save the planet. It could also feature Bono on a penny farthing, and Sir Clive Sinclair in a C5. Try and tell me that isn’t a great plan.

The Sugababes ARE Charlie’s Angels
Very natural affinity at work here, with the constantly changing line-ups and the ass-kicking femo-ethos. Big risk: it might get a bit dull watching them take down their target every week with a withering look. Still, we could get either Lemar or one of the ex-members of Blue to play Bosley.

Scott Bakula has a Quantum Leap
We can bring Scott Bakula back for this one, and Dean Stockwell. Because it would be HILARIOUS to watch it back now, knowing that Ziggy was actually just a Cylon plot to finish the human race. Yowsers.

 

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