The ’80s TV heroes that deserve a second shot at fame

As updated versions of classic 80s TV shows such as The Equalizer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers prove to be huge hits, we take a look at a few more forgotten classics that deserve to be revived

Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting. Courtesy: ABC Photo Archives

The Equalizer is the latest in a long line of 1980s TV shows and movies to make a comeback. Here few other TV shows that I think might be ripe for a reboot or a sequel.

Blake’s 7

Second only to Doctor Who in the annals of classic BBC TV sci-fi, Blake's 7 was created by the writer Terry Nation – who also created Doctor Who's greatest foes, the Daleks – and ran for four seasons between 1978 and 1981. Set in a bleak, dystopian future, it told the story of idealistic freedom fighter Roj Blake, who assembles a crew of criminals on board a stolen spaceship to battle a fascist Federation that rules Earth and much of the galaxy through fear. Envisioned as a sort of "Dirty Dozen in space", the heroes were all deeply flawed, many of them loathed each other, and they frequently were defeated – or even killed, most famously in the final episode where the entire crew was shot dead... or were they? There have been several attempts over the years to get a sequel off the ground, and an entirely new US reboot was announced two years ago but progress seems to have stalled again.

Sapphire and Steel

A rare attempt from Britain's ITV network to produce a sci-fi rival to the BBC's Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel – created by writer P J Hammond – starred Joanna Lumley and David McCallum as mysterious extra-dimensional agents who are part of a larger group of similar beings, each with distinctive special powers, tasked with ensuring time functions correctly and is not manipulated or compromised by malicious beings from outside the time stream, who are trying to find and take advantage of weak spots to break through and destroy humanity.

Knight Rider

Actually, there have already been several Knight Rider revivals and sequels, the latest of which was in 2008, to the classic David Hasselhoff show about a crime-fighter (Michael Knight) and his super-intelligent talking car (KITT). However none of them managed to recapture the charm of the original. A big-screen version has been in the works for years and is still in development, with Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt the latest name linked to the lead role.

Automan

Back in early 1980s, video games were booming. In 1982, Disney cashed in on their growing popularity with the movie Tron, in which a computer programmer was sucked into the virtual world of a computer mainframe. A year later, the legendary American TV producer Glen A Larson put a TV spin on the idea with Automan, in which a character from a computer programme is brought to life in the real world to fight crime, complete with his own computer-generated vehicles and a little digital friend called Cursor. The series lasted for only 12 episodes.

Manimal

The late British actor Simon McCorkindale starred in Manimal, another strange US TV drama created by Glen A Larson, this time about a crime-fighter who could change into any animal – although for TV budgetary reasons, he always seemed to choose either a black panther or a hawk. The show was cancelled after only 8 episodes, although the character was revived briefly in 1998 in an episode of Night Man, another Larson show.

Max Headroom

The quirky character of Max Headroom first appeared in a cyberpunk TV movie – Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future – made by the UK's Channel 4 network in 1985. He then hosted a music-video show and proved so popular that he got his own talk show before appearing in a cult TV sci-fi drama series, based on the TV movie, that ran for two seasons on US TV. Max and his human altar ego, journalist Edison Carter, were played by the American actor Matt Frewer, who wore prosthetic make-up that made him look like he was a computer-generated character at a time when the available digital technology was not capable of doing the job. Glitches in his "programming" meant that he often stuttered and stammered when speaking.

Quantum Leap

Dr Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) spent five seasons bouncing through time after a quantum experiment went wrong, “leaping” into the bodies of people at turning points in their lives, who needed his help “to put right what once went wrong” by changing their destinies. He was aided along the way by his friend from his own time, Al Calavicci, (Dean Stockwell), who appeared in the form of a hologram. In the final episode, Sam selflessly gave up the chance to return home, instead remaining lost in time, helping people forever.

Moonlighting

The show that launched Bruce Willis's career. He starred as David Addison, a private detective at an agency owned by former model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd), which she discovers is the only asset she has left after a crooked accountant steals all her money. Moonlighting was a groundbreaking show, with the characters frequently breaking the "fourth wall" to talk directly to the viewers, and regularly broadcasting experimental episodes such as a Shakespeare-style period comedy based on The Taming of the Shrew, a black-and-white dream sequence episode (introduced by Orson Welles, no less) and one episode with an extended dance routine to the sound of the Billy Joel song Big Man on Mulberry Street. When the series was released on DVD a few years ago, both Willis and Shepherd expressed an interest in a TV reunion, but nothing more came of the idea.

The Fall Guy

Fresh from the success of The Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors followed it up with The Fall Guy – created by, you guessed it, Glen A Larson – in which he played Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman who spent his time between making movies utilising his death-defying skills to hunt down criminals as a bounty hunter.