The first episode will air on Wednesday night, but NBC has made it available for advance viewing at hulu.com and at nbc.com.
Our hero is Mike Traceur (Justin Bruening), the long-estranged son of the original version's Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff, who makes a cameo here). There's another talking car -- this time, KITT stands for Knight Industries Three Thousand -- in which Mike will gallivant around the world on various assignments that the FBI can't be too closely associated with themselves.
I wasn't a huge fan of the original Knight Rider, but the one thing it did have going for it was a complete understanding of just how cornball it was. Hasselhoff camped it up in a spectacular self-parody of machismo, and William Daniels was exquisitely bitchy and self-centered as the voice of KITT. By comparison, Bruening is a callow little boy -- it's impossible to believe that he was ever an Army Ranger -- and KITT's voice, provided this time by Val Kilmer, is insufferably ponderous and somber.
The supporting cast is also taking things far too seriously. Sydney Tamiia Poitier, as FBI agent Carrie Ruvai, lives in mortal terror that a smile might cross her face; Deanna Russo, as love interest Sarah Graiman, delivers all of her lines in a drab monotone. Only Bruce Davison, who plays Sarah's father, Charles, seems to be having any fun at all. (It is a bit stunning, I must say, how quickly Davison has aged over the years. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was playing romantic sidekicks, and now here he is as the crackpot old mad scientist.)
The concept of Knight Rider could still hold up and provide a pleasant enough hour of cheesy fun, but with all of the humor sucked out of it, this version is too dull to be worth watching.
NOTE: After making this post, I realized that what I'd watched was actually the 90-minute movie/pilot that aired last spring; the first episode that will air on Wednesday is also available for viewing at hulu.com and nbc.com. I suppose it's possible that over the intervening months, the show's producers have fixed the lack of humor problem, but I don't care enough to watch and find out.
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