The 80s weren’t as bad as the 70s for genre TV, but we were still pretty desparate for back then and watched anything.
But Manimal, man . . . just an endless series of “Hey, how did he get his pants back?” moments.
Poor, dead, Simon MacCorkindale.
Manimal was awesome. I don’t want to see if again and realize it was terrible.
Downright “tolkien”
I’m putting this on my list with The Man From Atlantis of “Shows from my childhood that I don’t dare watch again for fear that they were actually terrible.”
If we’re doing 80s TV intros…
Where’s the love for Automan with Desi Arnaz, Jr.?
I really didn’t think it was possible to overuse the “screeching hawk” or “roaring jaguar” soundbites… and I was 100% correct, you can’t.
NBC tried putting this thing up against Dallas…
ROWR!
I was sure I saw Simon MacCorkindale in “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” at the Hippodrome in Birmingham; however, a quick look at his wikipedia page makes no mention of the production. I feel safer questioning my memory than calling in to doubt the veracity of Wikipedia 
I agree, Manimal ROCKED!
I also agree, I don’t want to rewatch it to verify it’s rockingness. No good could come of that. . .
Right here! Cursor would put Manimal in a cage, and Autocar would turn him into roadkill.
No contest.
But what about…Supertrain! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUERtAe73NI
Boy I used to watch Manimal. In Spanish no less… Let that sink in.
11 INTROS TO TACKY 80s SCI-FI/FANTASY TV
Manimal and Automan were both Glen A. Larson productions. Basically, after Knight Rider became a hit, the networks were perfectly willing to try out any other ideas he had for shows. And Street Hawk (with music by Tangerine Dream!) was an obvious Knight Rider ripoff, though not produced by Larson. So, in summary: blame Knight Rider for much of this.
Classic stuff.
And there was Stewart Copeland doing his thing on Ewar Woowar’s “The Equalizer”.
How much better would Netflix be if all these shows were available? A LOT better!
“Ewar Woowoo”
Took me a moment. He was the only actor who came up with his stage name after farting in the bath.
He did lots of stuff!
When Manimal first came out they only had one transformation effect ready for broadcast. In later episodes it was always amusing to see when they’d got another one done.
I’ve recently (within the past 5 years) rewatched several episodes of both Manimal and Automan, and thought they both held up fairly well. (I’m not sure I could have made it through the entire series of the latter, but the first few episodes were pretty fun.)
