If Airwolf Gets You Up As A kid You’re Set For An Interesting Life

I’ll front up to this right now, I am not A Merkin (copyright George W.Bush) I’m what many United States soldiers would have lovingly described as a Limey back in World War Two when they came over here, fired a few shots, and got lots of women pregnant, but as an English slash slightly small Irishman (with no US heritage I hasten to add), I have a quaint fascination with most things American.

Whether that be music, film, television, architecture, politics, crime, the proud nationalism and pride, the NFL, the Grand Canyon and even Niagara Falls (I give that one to Canada in fairness, the US can count it as your own when they become the 51st State over Mark Of Carney’s Unlawful Knowledge and dead body). I am a little bit of a whore for all those things, and it also seeped into my childhood.

My parents were greatly willing to encourage my creativity, wishful thinking and freedom of thought, so I was regularly treated to such beauties like the A Team, Quantum Leap, the Dukes Of Hazard, Airwolf, Knight Rider, Magnum PI and many others, as simply put British versions and attempts at these types of more high octane shows just didn’t cut the mustard, to use another English vernacular. As a kid watching this type of adrenaline pumping entertainment was my equivalent of winning big on an online crypto casino outlet – I’d rush to school the day after to tell my friends the high I had just had, and invariably they had watched the same as well and enjoyed it just as much.

Having been born in 1979 when the Bee Gees were topping the UK music charts with ‘Tragedy’ – latterly backed up that month by a slightly more inspiring ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor – I am happy to say I have survived and I would like to consider myself as not being a tragedy, and in the year of our Lord’s 2025 (I’m not religious either) I decided to revisit a childhood squee as I’m told the youth say, and decided to re-watch Airwolf when I found it repeated on my English television screen.

Yes, I am that traditional, I didn’t even bother to try and source it on a streaming service. I am that polite and English I just let a television channel tell me what I was going to watch at that particular hour of the day when I noticed it was on. And I did not regret my choice to delve into some childhood nostalgia.

Let’s quickly move past the fact Airwolf was at core an executive helicopter, and having been sold to a collector after the series utterly collapsed, it ultimately crashed in 1992, resulting in the tragic and sad deaths of three occupants. Whilst I only just learned that and my heart goes out to all involved – that is absolutely the most un-Airwolf thing that should have happened when you consider the sheer joy that I gained as a kid from hearing Sylvester Levay’s theme tune every time the heavily modified Bell 222 inexplicably came out of random Volcano that seemed to exist in the US and then proceeded to have an endless supply of armaments that it was always given at least ten minutes to fire, without actually needing to move whilst the baddies randomly used hand guns or resorted to fly swatters to try and take this incredible piece of machinery down.

That paragraph seemed to last as long as Airwolf could fire in fairness.

The fact it had a silent mode just utterly blew my mind when I was not yet old enough to have experience puberty.

Upon rewatching it, I introduced my bae thinking that she would equally squee, love the uplifting moments of the music and the general feel good ‘do good’ nature of the scripts, even if I am more than fully aware that it was a little bit soft, and little bit trite, and certainly not the best thing that Donald P. Bellisario had ever come up before he walked away. I’m not even talking about the post Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine random explosion reboot and recast when they decided they wanted a new, more sober, flavour and seemed to have cardboard seats with Dick van Dyke’s Chim Chim Cher-ee’s son. As attractive as Barry might have been even for a heterosexual guy who never NEVER experimented, seeing the same cinematography where Airwolf attacked from multiple angles but from the same God damn position taking the same God damn route was a little bit of a let down. The music could not save that.

For the record, she didn’t. I believe I heard the words ‘you’re an easily pleased ******* idiot’ and she quickly wanted to go back to playing Animal Crossing. She may have been right, but I enjoyed it and I’m too much of a gentleman to call her a ‘******* idiot’ for playing that game.

Der, da da da der, da da da der……and so on.