Knight Rider: Season One Review Score: 5/10 | Date Posted: August 8th 2004 In: DVD Reviews Knight Rider: Season One Review by Vince D’Amato Starring: David Hasselhoff Directed by: (Various). Released by: Universal. Knight Rider: Season One is certainly wrapped well! The killer packaging is almost too cool for this campy (in hindsight) 80’s “action” series. For a show that was inundated with press around the same time that The A-Team made the cover of TIME magazine for having over 50 separate acts of violence in a single episode –Knight Rider’s claim to fame was stunts that were so dangerous, dummies had to be used most of the time should a stuntman actually get killed trying to Turbo Boost over a moving train- I found Season One to be surprisingly lacking in the action department. Wait a minute... I’m having a flashback… I’m eight years old, watching Knight Rider… and I’m thinking, Jeez, the action in this show is kinda lame… Could this, perhaps, have something to do with the camp value over cult status? Wait a minute; I’m getting a flashback… David Hasselhoff in bright red Speedos… Quickly getting back to the subject at hand, Universal’s box set is nothing short of impressive. We get three double-sided DVDs with 3 to 4 episodes per side, special features on Disc 1 and a bonus 4th DVD with the 90’s made-for-television Knight Rider 2000 movie! (The low-rated movie that featured a new red K.I.T.T., produced as part of the cable “Action Pack” TV-movie weekend series that lasted all of 6 shows in 1994). So much stuff in one box! It doesn’t look like I’ll be reviewing each disc separately this time. Anyway, moving on… At this point, if you’re asking What the hell’s a K.I.T.T.?!! then I’ll bring you up to speed: police Detective Michael Long is involved in a Las Vegas espionage sting that goes so wrong he ends up shot in the face. His dying body is then retrieved by the Knight organization and his black Trans Am converted into a bullet-proof, super-powered, fully automated piece of artificial intelligence on four wheels, named KITT. Meanwhile, Michael Long gets his face reconstructed and somehow grows eight inches to become Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff). Legally dead, he’s free to fight the criminals who operate “above the law”. Or in another sense, mega-conspirators. This is all covered in the pilot episode on Disc One. As a special feature, Disc One also includes full-length audio commentary on the pilot episode “Knight of the Phoenix” from star David Hasselhoff and series creator Glen Larson (who also wrote the screenplay). Yes, I’m sue at this point all of this sounds as fun as a barrel of monkeys, or a case of beer, or whatever. But seriously, if you can actually sit through this pilot a second time in order to hear the commentary, then you might want to bump up the final score a couple of numbers to adjust for your personal tastes (or insanity, as the case may be). Knight Rider as a show is a rather strange hybrid itself, one of crime drama, comic book and soap opera expertly intermingles to bring the audience… a talking bullet-proof car and a crime fighter who is not a superhero, but does not carry a badge or a gun. Umm… well, there is lots of cheesy dialog. I guess when you get right down to it; one could say time has not been very kind to this series. The bonus DVD, Knight Rider 2000, is set in the distant future of the year 2000, where police are freelancers in major cities and they use guns that don’t fire bullets. KITT is equipped with planetary communications abilities an Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) spend his days fishing in the country – until he’s called back to active duty in this slickly-shot (but still cheesy) TV movie. The action quota has been raised significantly, but it doesn’t really make it any easier to watch. Knight Rider is pretty fun when you stumble home half-drunk and happen to catch an episode on cable at 2 AM, but despite the obvious efforts from Universal Studios, this DVD set is really nothing more than proof that not every television series needs to be released on home video.

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