The news that Simon MacCorkindale is to join the cast of The Sound of Music has been greeted, in The Stage as much as anywhere, that he is “best known for his role as Harry Harper in Casualty”.
Those are words that could never be written by anyone who was witnessed the sheer lunatic majesty that was Manimal. Once that’s seared into your brain, it never leaves you.
The opening titles of Manimal are, like so many lost treasures, available on YouTube, albeit in a form that looks like they’ve been taken off a mobile phone copy of an old VHS that was originally recorded while somebody was fiddling with the ‘tracking’ function that nobody in their right minds ever really touched:
It may have lasted only eight episodes before being cancelled, but it did feature some man-to-animal transformations constructed by the doyen of such things, Stan Winston. Technically impressive they may have been for the time (and the TV budget), but unfortunately they take so long that all sense of wonder is lost. Even the wild cats looking on are bored as Dr Jonathan Crane (MacCorkindale) transforms from human to black panther before our very (disbelieving) eyes:
Now if they can work out a way of turning Captain von Trapp into a fearsome big cat, it might actually make The Sound of Music worth watching…
Possibly the only more insane programme in US TV history was Night Man – telepathic saxophone player by day, anti-gravity booted crimefighter by night – so it's fitting that there was a crossover episode in 1998. They updated the Manimal transformation sequence for it, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuh9vKoNcIg
Not absolutely sure what's going on, but London appears to have turned into 1890 for some reason.
Of course, Manimal dates from those pre-vdieo days when you'd watch rubbish on TV just because there was nothing else.
I distinctly remember Simon's character learning martial arts from watching animal footage & copying them. I was embarrassed watching it, goodness knows how he felt about doing it.
Whatever happened to Simon Macorkindale after he starred in the movie JAWS 3 (3D)?