The exterior shots of Hooker and Romano's patrol car almost never match the background

Watching an episode of T.J. Hooker the other day, something occurred to me. I should say now, Despite this being the 2nd blog-ette on it, I am in no way championing the show, T.J. Hooker. Don’t ever think that I am. Honestly. There is a myriad of things that are terrible about the programme. But just as fire and political power are irresistible to fire raisers and Mugabe these may be just the reasons which, by my nature, keep me coming back for another episode. It is not that I enjoy them. Really. Alright then I’ll prove it…

Let’s look at the evidence of just a few things which are both wrong and strangely compelling about T.J. Hooker:
William Shatner cannot deliver a scripted line, ever. And with this in mind should never have been made to say, given his weird inflections and vocal ticks: “No Romano, you’re forgetting that there is one important difference between statutory theft and what I’m doing. I have no desire to permanently remove the item from the owner’s possession!” let alone the heavier: “He… wasa… rapist… ofthemostbrutal… kind. He viciously raped many women over…and… overagain.” Just waiting to find out what line William Shatner will overdramatise next is enough to buy the box set alone.

T.J. Hooker, in perhaps a throwback from his younger days of doing something he describes as Automobile Hill Racing, steadfastly refuses to use the seatbelt in the patrol car whilst simultaneously adopting a high risk driving approach that often directs itself to him crashing into other cars driven by perps, perps running in front of the patrol car, or trees. I keep waiting for him to be thrown through his own windscreen or fall out of the car, hobbling from whiplash, begging the perp to give himself up he struggles to get off his knees. Instead the dramatic sudden reduction of speed only serves to propel him out of the car running every time. Which leads me onto…

T.J hooker, despite being older, heavier and patently less fit in a mobility-restricting uniform [and that toupee can’t be helping], most episodes chases the perp who is invariably younger, fitter, wearing sneakers and, frankly, running faster. But with each cut of the camera Shatner gains significant ground on him. T.J. Hooker, in a very subtle an attempt to one-up the Star-Trek franchise, can indeed it seems change the laws of physics. Take that Gene Rodenberry, if that is your real name!

T.J. Hooker also has a tendency to violently grab women, leading them by their arms which I suspect Shatner thinks is him ‘acting’ the emotion of affection/seduction but which I only find troubling. Let the lady take your arm when walking along the beach, don’t take hers and then force her walk at your police pace, Hooker, you controlling misogynist pig.

But Shatner is not all that is wrong here. Though he mainly is what is wrong. There is Stacey (played by Heather Locklear) delivering her scripted lines like an android. She sounds uncannily like the ship’s computer on the Enterprise. Perhaps sounding like the computer from the Enterprise-A is intentional – either as another film company in-joke about Star-Trek or simply that both Star-Trek and T.J. Hooker production crews found that the precise and flat intonation of a female voice was the only thing to soothe the volatile Shatner on set.

Those theories aside, each time she responds to Shatner’s own hopeless speech acting I half expect her to say, “Access code accepted, Hooker. Self-destruct sequence initiated, 99, 98…” She even dances like a robot designed by the Japanese, in at least 3 episodes.

And I am fairly sure the boy that plays Corrigan was playing, in one episode, the entirely different part of an old friend of Hooker's who had been falsely charged by the LCPD as someone who had carried out a string of grocery store robberies which eye-witnesses had testyfied as being done by 3 people, 1 being a woman.

[I concede that this returning actor thing has also been the case in Columbo - but Columbo is art.]

The only one that comes out with any respect is Romano. He’s OK. He's from Philadelphia, you know.

I should switch channels, look away at the very least – but I can’t. The plotting is hypnotic. The tone lies somewhere between Midsommer Murders and The Wire. It plays fast and loose with the genres of gritty reality, soap drama and humour in a way only most cop shows could dream/ have night terrors about.

I may have digressed there slightly from my original topic.