Knight Rider: An Icon Reborn

It's difficult, but not impossible to go and look at those 20-25 year old episodes of Knight Rider and not cringe. Sure you enjoyed them when you were like 9 years old, but they've most certainly dated now where all you can do is laugh at The Hoff's hair and hope to got that you're not watching the episode where they allow him to sing and reveal his "talent" to the world, or at least all of Germany.

The NBC President Ben Silverman was so impressed by the success of the Transformers movie last summer that he decided to revive Knight Rider. The result so far is a 90 minute TV movie that is designed to serve as a pilot for a new version of the popular show.

The good news is that there does seem to have been enough bucks thrown in and some good casting decisions as opposed to a bog - standard TV - movie - of - the - week that Sci-Fi are so fond of producing elsewhere. It looks very polished especially for something that had a character's voice entirely replaced with another actor's in the past two weeks. Val Kilmer signed on at the voice of KITT only a fortnight ago apparently because the originally recorded actor Will Arnett is under contract with GMC, so they didn't want him becoming the iconic voice of a Ford car.

And what a car it is; It's safe to say that this car shits on the fibreglass looking death trap that was the original KITT. The new Knight Industries Three Thousand is a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR. The only thing that outwardly relates this car with it's predecessor is the glowing red cylon-esque scanner in front that indicates KITT is active. The abilities of the car would not have even been conceived in the time of the original Knight Rider: a 550 horsepower solar hybrid engine, Real-time Military satellite access with high-speed internet data transfer and two amazing abilities that I'm not going to spoil here there's so awesome but that no doubt ate through the special effects budget faster than you can say "audacious computer generated imagery."

It's not all about the car though. It needs a driver; And in this generation it comes in the form of a bitter former Army Ranger, Mike Traceur (Justin Bruening) (above left) who happens to be the son of; yes you guessed it: Michael Knight! Anyway, without giving the not too shabby plot away; Traceur eventually teams up with KITT's creator Charles Graiman (Bruce Davison) who intends reviving The Foundation For Law and Government, Graiman's daughter Sarah (Deanna Russo), his roommate Dylan Fass (Wayne Kasserman) and supported by a hot lesbian FBI agent Carrie Rivai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier). David Hasselhoff himself (right) even turns up briefly to pass on the torch to his estranged "son" with a promise that he'll see him again.

All in all this could be a bigger, better version of Knight Rider which not so much hope for me, but hope it'll be popular for a new generation of 9 year olds so that they too can "enter the world of a man who does not exist". (OK and for me too, I wanna see more dammit!).

Footnote:
The only true sad thing now to look forward to (if this show is produced) is that you'll have millions of boy-racers outfitting their Honda's with a cheap KITT scanner light knock-off - classy!