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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: March 1st, 2016.
Director: Various
Cast: Ernest Borgnine, Michael Shannon, John Amos, Herbert Nelson, Itrene Tsu
Year: 1977
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The Series:
Ernest Borgnine, John Amos (COMING TO AMERICA, DIE HARD 2) walk into a bar with a screenwriter. They all get plastered and the writer goes "I got it! You two guys and an android cop!"
Welcome to the insanity of FUTURE COP.
The subject of an infamous Harlan Ellison lawsuit that the notoriously cranky writer won big, FUTURE COP was weird fare even by 70's standards. Accused of ripping off The Six Million Dollar Man, this show was actually more of a surreal buddy cop drama mixed wth a fish out of water comedy premise. The setup is dead simple - career cop Borgnine is paired with a new partner - a state of the art android. He's got to keep this secret about new boy/android Haven (Michael Shannon) hidden from his other partner played by John Amos.
The fact that Mill Creek dug this up and put it on DVD is a minor miracle. And as a cultural artifact it makes for fascinating viewing. 70's TV sci-fi was always a strange beast - a unique mix of forward thinking concepts, dated the minute they aired production designs (and fashions!) and often caveman level sexism. So here we get the spectacle of a supposedly top shelf android that spends most of the pilot stumbling around like R2-D2 juiced on spiked motor oil. The humor is cringe-worthy at times but amusing nonetheless. The three principals - Borgnine, Amos, and Shannon work well together and there's some surprisingly well choreographed action sequences. The pilot's most clever bit has a neat twist on racial profiling when the bot responds to a convenience store holdup.
The highlight of the entire series is episode two's movie length entry "The Mad Mad Bomber" which is directed by Ted Post of MAGNUM FORCE and BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES fame. This one has a political wingnut played Gerrit Graham running amok blowing up bridges and buildings. Carefully plotted and deftly directed, this was the kind of quality genre TV you got with higher end episodes of The Rookies or Police Story.
FUTURE COP only ran for 6 episodes but in a bizarre twist the network re-imagined the whole thing with virtually the same cast and premise months after the original series ended. This took the form of a decent TV movie called "Cops And Robin" about a murder witness on the lam from the criminal she spied in the act. In terms of fleshing out the man and machine/Borgnine and Shannon relationship, this telefilm probably did it the most successfully. There's even some genuinely heart tugging moments in this one!
Alas, that was the end of the FUTURE COP concept until Paul Verhoeven gave us officer Murphy in ROBOCOP.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Mill Creek have packed everything here onto two DVDs - about 8 hours of material. The 4:3 MPEG 2 encoded transfer looks about how you'd expect something of this vintage with no restoration work performed on it to - watchable. Slightly faded elements are a minor issue so colors here are a little subdued. The image is stable though and compression isn't a notable problem. Truthfully, this almost certainly looks better than it did on a 1976 tube TV.
The Dolby digital stereo 2 track is... adequate. I never had a problem hearing any dialog and the sound mix never displayed out of whack levels or any real hiss or distortion. Overall range is limited but fidelity is solid.
There are no extras whatsoever.
The Final Word:
An interesting and engaging cathode ray sci-fi oddity from the polyester era, FUTURE COP slots in nicely with its unjustly forgotten brethren like the LOGAN'S RUN and PLANET OF THE APES television series. Recommended for the adventurous and lovers of weird cult TV.
