Knight Rider: The Complete Third Series

I loved this show when I was a kid. I mean, a talking car! Wow! I always wanted, and still do want, my very own K.I.T.T. (that stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand). Think of all the cool adventures you'd get into if you had a car like that. Even if he didn't talk, or drive by himself, you'd still have the coolest car on the highway with that scanning red pulse light at the front.

Any modern TV show would be well into more complex storylines by the time a third season comes around. But Knight Rider seems to have more hokey plots than any other show of the early-to-mid Eighties.

For the uninitiated, Michael Knight, the man with the hair (or should I say the hair with the man?), David Hasselhoff himself, who, if my assumptions serve me correctly, went to the same acting school as William Shatner, used to be called Michael Long. He was a detective, who was shot in the face during an ambush and believed to have been killed. But he regained consciousness only to discover that plastic surgery has altered his face. And with his new identity came a new name.

A dying billionaire and chairman of Knight Industries, Wilton Knight, gave Michael an indestructible, talking Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am and recruited him as an agent in the Foundation of Law and Government. His job is to infiltrate crime organisations and kick the asses of criminals, be they petty or super.

So now we're pretty much up to speed. But like I said, the writing is hardly of 24 or CSI standards. Though if it was, I don't think it would have been so accessible for me as a kid. Episodes in which Michael matches wits with a Norman Bates type psycho is hardly the kind of material appropriate for a show about a talking car that can go 300mph.

If you've been keeping track of this on DVD, you might be excited to know that K.A.R.R. (Knight Automated Roving Robot), K.I.T.T.'s evil twin, returns. Though he's not voiced by Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen anymore.

It's the coolness of K.I.T.T. (and the Hoff's MASSIVE hair) that made long-lasting impression on the world. In terms of quality, the show is pretty dated when you consider the production design and by-numbers direction, though they still manage to capture The Hoff pretty well, without resorting to ariel photography to capture his 'fro.

After a spin-off series and two TV movies, there's still life left in Knight Rider and with a movie planned for 2008 (starring The Hoff, of course) we can look forward to more of K.I.T.T. and only hope and pray that the afro returns, too.