- Title: Street Hawk – Pilot
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back in time to when a motorcycle cop turned vigilante helped keep the streets of Los Angeles safe on an experimental bike known as Street Hawk. Created by those who apparently thought Knight Rider and Airwolf were too realistic, Street Hawk introduces us to motorcycle cop Jesse Mach (Rex Smith) who is injured, and whose partner (Robert Beltran) is killed, in the “Pilot.” Reassigned to desk duty as part of the Police Deartment’s public relations office, Mach is also secretly recruited for a top secret project by the Norman Tuttle (Joe Regalbuto) to test-drive his experimental motorcycle known as Street Hawk. The reckless Mach is far from Tuttle’s first choice, and Mach takes some convincing to agree to the project (experimental surgery to repair his damaged knee is certainly a selling point), but by the end of the show’s first episode the odd couple find a way to work together.
Despite the show only lasting 13 episode’s it earned a bit of a cult following spawning four novels and various toy releases in different countries. The “Pilot” centers around Mach struggling to fit into his new role in public relations under former reporter Rachel Adams (Jeannie Wilson) while secretly training to get back into shape after his surgery. To keep any involvement with the project secret, Mach will be forced to keep up the charade of his injury during his day job. Meanwhile, our protagonist uses the remainder of his time to investigate the death of his partner by a drug smuggler (Christopher Lloyd) with a supped-up SUV and a dirt-bike team who like to commit armed robberies in their spare time. Finding the link he’s been searching for, Mach goes off half-cocked but also proves the bike’s worth and his own (even if he has to kidnap and blackmail Tuttle over the course of the episode to get what he wants). Pure 80s, Street Hawk is goofy fun. Some of the stunts of the “Pilot” have aged better than others, and some might not have been that good even in their day, but the bike (designed off of the 1983 Honda XL500 trailbike) still looks pretty cool.
