As a child of the late Seventies, I have fond memories of the 80s television that began in my formative years. Given that my family moved all over the place while I was a child - I was schooled on four different continents - I lose track of what shows were aired in which country... No-one here in the UK remembers Supertrain or Riptide - I saw those whilst in the U.S or Trinidad. Equally not a soul I speak to here in England remembers Cover Up or Tales of the Gold Monkey so not sure where I saw them!! Everybody seems to clearly remember the A-Team and Knight Rider, some remember Street Hawk, others can stretch as far back as Automan. Those asked are of a similar age group to myself (in the just-south-of-30 bracket) So I tried an experiment with my A level students here at college and asked them what of these they remembered. I accepted the fact that these kids are all born across 87-89 but was surprised that they seemed aware of A Team / Knight Rider and some more enlightened souls even Street Hawk and Airwolf - but not one of them had EVER heard of Macgyver!! Even my own age group are fuzzy over this Ace amongst the dross - at most they are dimly aware that there was a show - "kind of a one-man A Team, but with no guns..." and ".. with that bloke from Stargate in it?" One of them even believed that the Simpsons had CREATED Macgyver as a spoof show!!! Oh, the sacrilege! Thank Paramount for the release of the boxsets so I can now begin to educate the masses...
Seven seasons... SEVEN... Count them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 AND 7!!! What did Knightrider rack up? Four...five, tops! How can Street Hawk be better remembered than that? Why did Mac never hit Syndication in the same way? The UK's satellite services has many dedicated 'repeat' channels - none of which show Macgyver at all EVER... and Don't get me started on Gold monkey!! Aside from the odd blip on the radar - Buffy, Firefly and even Smallville (Ok, Brimstone, and a few others) TV lost something when we left the 80s Like the gag-reel outtake I saw of SG1 with Carter and O'Neil stuck on a moon, the gate down and disaster looming - Carter turns to O'Neil: "Seven Seasons of MacGyver, and you can't get us off this rock?!"
Seven seasons... SEVEN... Count them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 AND 7!!! What did Knightrider rack up? Four...five, tops! How can Street Hawk be better remembered than that? Why did Mac never hit Syndication in the same way? The UK's satellite services has many dedicated 'repeat' channels - none of which show Macgyver at all EVER... and Don't get me started on Gold monkey!! Aside from the odd blip on the radar - Buffy, Firefly and even Smallville (Ok, Brimstone, and a few others) TV lost something when we left the 80s Like the gag-reel outtake I saw of SG1 with Carter and O'Neil stuck on a moon, the gate down and disaster looming - Carter turns to O'Neil: "Seven Seasons of MacGyver, and you can't get us off this rock?!"
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