It’s not until after his best friend is murdered by drug dealers and he himself is run off the road and injured that he takes up Norman’s offer to drive Street Hawk, which can ‘reach incredible speeds of up to 300 miles an hour’ (well, they speed up the film). Spied on by the government’s engineer, Norman Tuttle, who has all the stealth of a football mascot, Jesse is approached to become the new line in urban crime-fighting, which, of course, he at first turns down. His skills, passion and police training make him the ideal candidate for a secret government organisation, to become the test pilot for a new form of patrolling the streets, namely, to be the rider for the new Street Hawk prototype motorcycle. He also used his ‘skills’ to make a bit of money on the side dressed up as campy stunt motorcyclist, much to the anger of his shouting angry, stressing, sweaty police boss (yay for stereotypes). A sort of police-styled Eddie Kidd, if you will.Īmiable and all American, his life and career is carefree and happy, patrolling the streets of what, I guess, is LA (but looks a lot like Robocop‘s Detroit, full of abandoned warehouses and industrial sprawl) with his buddy. So, onto the show itself… Kicking off the series we have the obligatory hour and a half pilot, two-part origin story in which we meet Jesse Mach, a police motorcyclist with a addiction to all things bike-related and especially stunts. Plus how can you not love Christopher Lloyd happily slumming it and chewing scenery as the main bad guy (with evil truck) in the pilot episode However, I must admit, I still enjoyed it and chuckled to myself from time to time as actors such as George Clooney and Robert Beltram (Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager) cut their acting teeth on the clichéd dialogue. On second viewing, it’s just a generic show with a nifty looking motorbike. For a television show that was only shown once in the UK way back in 1985, why do I remember it so well? Was it, for some reason, a lot better show than it intended to be? Or the acting or effects must have stood out for my nine-year-old brain to have recalled so much.īut, nope.

Stealth attraction disc