Knight Rider - Season One | New DVD Releases

Knight Rider - Season One Review

Knight Rider - Season One Overview

An iconic TV classic is back and better than ever in the reinvented, updated, and super-charged Knight Rider Season One. From executive producers Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity franchise), David Bartis (The O.C.) and Glen Larson (Battlestar Galactica) comes this action-packed series about the coolest car ever created, K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Three Thousand), that’s equipped with artificial intelligence capable of hacking into any computer, the weapons system of a jet fighter, and incredible custom body technology that allows it to transform into other vehicles. Relive every Season One episode as an elite team of crime-fighters work with K.I.T.T. to track down elusive, high-tech villains. Presented in uninterrupted Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, you won’t want to miss this fast-paced ride to the wild side!

Knight Rider - Season One Specifications

The '80s television phenomenon Knight Rider, in which David Hasselhoff and his hair teamed up with an erudite wonder car named KITT to fight crime, has undergone a variety of stalled attempts at a revival over the years, with a number of TV movies and short-lived syndicated series that failed to capture the original's wisecracking and smooth-riding formula. Most successful, however, was 2008's big-budget (and nicely self-aware) revamp, in which the son of the original Michael Knight takes the driver's seat of KITT's latest incarnation, this time a nanotech-sporting Shelby Mustang (voiced by Val Kilmer) with all sorts of new whiz-bang junk in the trunk.

Despite an onscreen benediction from the Hoff himself, the two-hour pilot movie admittedly clunks a bit, with a few too many cross-country trips and a lack of any real hissable villains. Things improve considerably once the regular series begins, however, as Man and Car face off against the likes of terrorist surfers, nitro-burning street racers, and many other evildoers equipped with a plethora of expendable, easily explodable vehicles.

Formulaically enjoyable as these early bikini-intensive episodes often are, though, things really pick up mid-season, with a genuinely tense three-part story arc that ups the dramatic ante, makes some surprising alterations to the cast roster, and, most importantly, reintroduces KITT's ticked-off cyborg nemesis KARR. The lack of a second season brought an end to this late-blooming creative surge, unfortunately, but, overall, this remains a breezily escapist, slickly helmed revamp that manages to do its daddy proud. Any series that features both KITT morphing into a truck and comes up with a scientific reason for its human leads to strip down to their underwear within the first 10 minutes of its first episode is a show with a firm understanding of exactly what it is. Special features include cast and crew commentary on the pilot, a rather overproduced gag reel, and several featurettes about the original series that should keep gearheads briefly riveted. --Andrew Wright