h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd always wondered why there was this goshawful impostor of a series of Airwolf hanging around ITV at 2am. It was sooooo much worse than the original. They didn't even have any shots of the actors *with* the Airwolf, and the stock footage they did use didn't mesh too well. One episode was set on temperate farmland but all the shots of Airwolf flying 'overhead' were against an arizona desert backdrop. Quite apart from anything else, the stock material was on film and the canadian series appeared to be shot on video, so when you saw them setting off towards the helicopter you knew you'd never see them reach it because it was never really there. They did on the other hand climb into lesser helicopters, something that emphasised their lack of access to the real thing. I'm surprised we didn't see an attempt to create new aerial footage using a remote control model Airwolf. The props were cheap, the control room looked bad, and the directing and acting was appalling (for all its faults the cast of the original series were respected actors). Just about the only thing it had in common with Airwolf was the grey jumpsuit the pilots wore, but grey jumpsuits do not a series make.

There's one thing I don't quite follow. How does making a really really bad extra series guarantee you a place in syndicated television? Is there some minimum number of episodes you have to have for TV companies to be interested in buying it? I'd frankly rather be watching repeats of the good series than having this garbage served up in its place.

The Canadian series was several orders of magnitude worse than Airwolf, and looked like one of those films made by fans on an expensive camcorder. It's not like the original Airwolf was ever high art, but the Canadian series dispensed with any vestiges of entertainment value completely. Ugh.

Syndication. I think, although can only speak with knowledge I have gained from reading, that syndication usually requires a set number of episodes. Often in the U.S., a television show will be canned after only a few episodes have been made. So the producers make a few extra episodes (at low cost) which then mean the series can be syndicated. Another example is the late 1980s Twilight Zone.