We Were Running With The Knight

Getting back to the the new TV season; It really does seem as if there are not any new ideas, just copies of old ones.  Case in point, the big show on NBC this year is about a black sports car that talks.  No it's not a remake of 'My Mother The Car' (Though anything with a Van Dyke in it you got to love, even if it's not Dick), it's a little show called 'Knight Rider'.  Now I may be crazy but I'm pretty sure there was another show called 'Knight Rider' that I used to watch back in the 80's.  

That's right, the Knight Industries Two-Thousand (or KITT) is back and is supposedly better than ever.  The only difference with this new one is that  a) Due to the popularity of a certain Michael Bay film, apparently KITT is now a transformer, and  b) Instead of the the brilliant stage actor William Daniels voicing the car, we now get a monotone Val Kilmer. 

I always liked Val Kilmer and thought he was a pretty cool actor who often chose avant garde projects for himself.  So what is he doing in a two-bit crappy knock-off of a cult 80's TV show?  Maybe a couple hours a month in a sound booth gives him a pretty good paycheck.  Or maybe he just finally realized that no matter how hard he tries to stretch himself as an actor, he will never be able to top the cinematic classic 'Real Genius' (though his performance in 'Top Secret' comes terribly close).

Even though David Hasselhoff may say differently, KITT was the real star of 'Knight Rider'.  He looked sleek and cool, he could turbo-boost through the back of a semi-trailer, but best of all KITT was funny.  The car had a great personality that would often criticize and make fun of The Hoff.  The William Daniels voice was warm and engaging, making you care about the car as a real character. When I watched NBC's back-door pilot last spring, there was zero character in

 the KITT car.  It wasn't something you cared about, it was just a car that could do cool things. That gets old pretty quick.

Now I'm only judging this based on the pilot I saw last spring.  Hopefully, NBC has fixed these problems for the series coming this fall.  It may be this incarnation of 'Knight Rider' will go the way of NBC's terrible update of 'The Bionic Woman' last year.  In any case, it simply shows that there are few new ideas bouncing around Hollywood. 

P.S.  Did you know that KITT the car had an evil twin named KARR? Also, throughout Latin America 'Knight Rider' is known as 'El Auto Fantastico'.  Oh--And do you remember when both David Hasselhoff and KITT guest-starred on 'Diff'rent Strokes'?  That was awesome!  They almost blew up Arnold!  It was hilarious!