A Flightless Wonder

Let’s see a show of hands: How many of you remember the 1989 Spenser: For Hire spin-off series, A Man Called Hawk? OK, you two meatheads in the back can lower your arms now. And the rest of you ... well, don’t feel too awful for your ignorance. The program imagined Spenser’s kick-ass sidekick, Hawk (played with such power and grace by Avery Brooks), transferring from Boston to his hometown of Washington, D.C., where he inevitably became a champion for people who needed one. It was a pretty thin concept, and bled Hawk of the ominous authority he’d been given by Spenser creator Robert B. Parker. To just about nobody’s surprise, A Man Called Hawk lasted on ABC-TV for only 13 episodes.

I’d pretty much forgotten about A Man Called Hawk until this week, when Lee Goldberg posted that series’ main title sequence in his blog, A Writer’s Life. It’s certainly an uninspiring opening for what I remember as a disappointing show that utterly wasted the talents of a superior performer. Brooks was better showcased in his next gig, as Commander Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.