The Iconic 80s SF No One Dares Remake, And How It Was Destroyed By Rot

By Joshua Tyler and Jonathan Klotz | Updated 25 seconds ago

Ask someone to name the most popular action shows of the 80s, and chances are you’ll hear Miami Vice, A-Team, Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., and maybe even The Fall Guy before they remember one of the most popular shows of the decade: Airwolf. Even if you’ve never seen a single episode of the helicopter action series, you know exactly what it’s all about.

For a season or two, Airwolf seemed like it was on the verge of being the coolest television show of all time. Until it fell out of the sky in a flaming ball of fire. Destroyed by drug addicted stars, ill-advised character deaths, and a budget crunch that left the show flying around the equivalent of Hot Wheels helicopters on screen instead of actually shooting flying sequences.

This is why Airwolf failed.

Airwolf Began As A Magnum P.I. Spinoff

The concept for Airwolf actually began as a Magnum P.I. spinoff. Helicopter stunts were already a major part of Magnum, and series creator Donald P. Bellisario had an idea to take it further.

So, in season 3 of Magnum P.I., he did an episode called “Two Birds of a Feather,” intending to turn its events into a spinoff show. It involves an ace pilot and treasure hunter named Sam Houston Hunter, whom Magnum knows from his Vietnam days. 

Sam was played by William Lucking; the idea was to make a spinoff show starring the Sam character. Bellesario had already worked with Lucking on projects like In Search Of The Gold Monkey, another good candidate for a Why It Failed someday.  The concept didn’t quite work out, but it was eventually retooled into Airwolf, a far more unique take on the idea of a tortured ace pilot than the one on display in Bellisario’s Magnum PI episode.

The Best Main Character Name In Fiction

Airwolf stars Jan-Michael Vincent as a character with the most amazing name in the entire history of fiction. He’s military test pilot Stringfellow Hawke. His chief character trait is that he likes to hang out in the wilderness, brooding while he plays the cello. Stringfellow Hawke. Get it? 

His friends call him String for short. Maybe I should say friend. Because String is the most introverted action hero of all time, and he doesn’t do a lot of hanging out. 

Through a series of double-crosses, Stringfellow finds himself in possession of the ultimate experimental stealth helicopter, a high-tech sci-fi machine capable of traveling at super speeds and defeating everything else in the air. Refusing to give the chopper back, String ends up with every government and shadowy organization in the world out for his head. 

He hides the helicopter, named Airwolf, in the coolest desert lair imaginable and uses it for his own purposes. Those purposes often involve String rescuing hot belly dancers from the desert or blowing up bad-guy terrorists in inferior flying machines.

The exterior shots of the lair, which are often revisited in the show, are from Monument Valley on the Arizona/Utah border. The interior shots, with the helicopter taking off, are studio-built, with the show combining practical location footage with effects and sets for the helicopter cave hangar feel.

Season 1 features Hawke working for and against The Firm, an obviously evil organization that happens to be the lesser of many evils, in a series of missions that happen to reflect the real-world flashpoints of the Cold War. 

It’s dark, it’s atmospheric, and String is forced to make decisions with no good answer. The episodes’ focus on geopolitical drama gives it greater stakes than you’d ever expect from a show about a super helicopter. 

Made With A Rented Helicopter And Some Fiberglass

If Airwolf were filmed today, the super helicopter would probably be some sort of boring CGI construct, but for Airwolf, especially in season one, they had a real chopper that they went out and filmed doing amazingly cool stuff.

Surprisingly, the studio didn’t own the actual helicopter they filmed. Instead, they leased a Bell 222 from JetCopters Inc. in Van Nuys, California, and then dressed it up with fiberglass to make it look awesome. Those cosmetic additions are reported to have significantly improved the helicopter’s handling; the pilots loved them, and they enabled them to do all kinds of stunts they might not have pulled off as well without them. 

A Great First Season Followed By Disaster

Season 1 was, in retrospect, the high point of Airwolf, with the following two seasons devolving into hokey action more in line with Knight Rider than a Tom Clancy novel. After season one, the amazing aerial dogfights that made the show were noticeably getting shorter and less cinematic. 

Yet in the show’s defense, when that theme song kicks in, and Hawke lands the fatal missile, it’s still as awesome the 20th time as it is the first time. 

Later, Ernest Borgnine, who played Hawke’s only real friend and backer, Dominic Santini, was written off the show in one of the most dramatic ways possible during season 4. They wrote off his character to the point where there was no doubt he wasn’t coming back. 

Success Destroys Jan-Michael Vincent And Airwolf

At first, the show was a huge, huge hit. The two-hour pilot, “Shadow of the Hawke” debuted after the Super Bowl in 1984 and was watched by a whopping 77 million viewers.

As the series exploded in popularity, Jan-Michael Vincent, who was already a multiple-time Golden Globe winner, found himself, almost overnight, the highest-paid star on television. CBS knew that without him, there was no show. His epic performance was the key to everything Airwolf did, and it set the dark and brooding tone for the entire show.

Unfortunately, the real world outside the show destroyed Jan-Michael Vincent. Haunted by personal demons encouraged by the sudden windfall, Vincent’s extreme alcoholism made him impossible to work with. 

In a rare move, CBS canceled the entire show after season 3. The ratings were sagging, the budget was cut, and Vincent’s behavior made CBS want out. 

Airwolf Season 4 Isn’t The Same Show

After season 3, Airwolf was sold off to the basic cable network USA for a complete, top-to-bottom retooling with an all-new cast. USA didn’t get the real helicopter in the sale, forcing the last round of episodes to rely on old footage, or, in some hilarious cases, the toy replica filling in. 

Jan-Michael Vincent, once one of Hollywood’s most promising and talented actors, was now out of work and would never recover, and his entire life devolved into a mess of addiction and misery after the show ended. That’s why most Airwolf fans pretend the series ended when Jan-Michael Vincent left. 

Peak 1980s TV

Though the show fell apart behind the scenes, there’s no greater example of peak 1980s TV action. Airwolf combined Cold War paranoia, hokey action, a bombastic synth score, and a charismatic leading man into the perfect 80s package that could never be replicated. 

Other shows tried, including Street Hawk, which is basically just Airwolf with a motorcycle, but they all crashed and burned. Miami Vice and The A-Team were remade for the big screen. We even somehow got a Dukes of Hazzard movie. But no one has dared bring back Stringfellow Hawke and his cello. The world’s still not ready for Airwolf.

Luckily, the original show is available on free streaming, and it’s still worth a watch. Just make sure to eject before the start of season 4.