The time, the place: ITV, Saturday teatime, 1974-1978.
But really: A brave new world in which science would soon make spare-part surgery as simple as scavenging a starter motor for an old Ford Cortina.
The $6 Million set-up: Astronaut Steve Austin (Lee Majors) crashes a prototype space shuttle and ends up in a right old state, sans two legs, one arm, and one eye. They have the technology, they can rebuild him - but because it's so expensive, he can only use his new bionic speed, strength, and sight in Secret Service assignments against the enemies of freedom, democracy, and the American Way. Swizz.
Uncomfortable thought: Where, in 1974, did they get that military footage of a spacecraft crashing? And was there anyone in it?
And another thing: If Austin could run at 60mph, why were all the action sequences filmed in slo-mo?
The $6 Million Enemies: Nuclear hijackers, would-be Presidential assassins, ditto moon-destroyers, radioactive space-men, robots taking over Hollywood (they succeeded, obviously), mutant chimps, Bigfoot . . . and William Shatner in a career-best wig, leading peace-loving dolphins into bad ways.
The $6 Million Sidekicks: Farah Fawcett, Majors's then wife, (practising to be one of Charlie's Angels) as jigglesome astronette Kelly Wood. Lyndsay Wagner as Steve's tennis-pro girlfriend Jaime Sommers, who went bionic after a sky-diving accident and had her own series, The Bionic Woman, in which she was often required to go undercover in such guises as a nun, a wrestler, a roller-derby star, etc.
And: Towards the end, when it started getting (comparatively) implausible, there came Andy Sheffield, the Bionic Boy, followed closely by Maximilian, the Bionic Dog.
Doesn't all this sound a bit like Superman? Yes - but the copyright on the Superman characters would have cost a fortune.
Pop credibility: Grim-up-north English punkettes We've Got A Fuzzbox (And We're Gonna Use It) had a near-hit in the 1980s with Bostin' Steve Austin. (Bostin' meaning . . . oh, rad, wicked, whatever you young folks say these days.)
The End: came, blissfully, in a 1994 TV movie, Bionic Ever After, when Steve and the Bionic Woman ran off into the sunset - in slo-mo. Surely a good omen of a happy and fulfilled married life . . .
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