I have a habit of archiving short lived TV series that will probably never be seen again. One of them was "Manimal". I finally pulled it out and watched the lone episode I had saved for posterity. My cable was out and I was running my VCR on a small generator and decided to dip into my collection. The episode was titled "Illusion" and centered around a Seigfried & Roy like duo and a murder supposedly committed by their prized tiger. All in all, certainly not the greatest TV show ever but it was kind of fun watching a "B" show from the early 1980's. When I taped this 23 years ago it was a completely unwatchable show. After 23 years of aging though and, along with the original commercials and NBC promos for other series, I found it fascinating. A real time capsule. I'm glad I finally watched it, but it'll most likely be another 23 years before I might watch it again. I HATE reruns!

Sure, at age 8, I enjoyed this show. Thankfully, I managed, even at such a tender age, to escape any permanent damage to my aesthetic sensibilities despite my viewing of this first-class bone-yard turd of a "show". That I thought it pleasant viewing at the time just proves the clear-headedness of not allowing mere children to make important decisions. Would you REALLY trust a person who laid claim to Manimal as decent viewing material? If you would, I recommend to your kin that they seek your immediate involuntary committal to hospital, under your jurisdiction's relevant mental health legislation.And I recommend an alternative ending to this misguided piece of tripe. The learned Professor, during one misguided hawkish fly-by of some crime-infested borough, mistakenly flies over a licensed hunting ground, and is unceremoniously felled by one thankfully eagle-eyed hunter. Forthwith, Benji, who due to his long-unemployed status is doubling as a hunting pooch, proceeds to de-feather and ingest the hapless hawk before he can morph back to a creature better able to defend himself.GOODBYE, MANIMAL!

Short-lived and watchable (well, it was when I was a teen) but pretty embarrassing to remember, Glen A. Larson and Donald R. Boyle's "Manimal" cast Simon MacCorkindale as a criminologist with the ability to tranform into any animal he chose; his assistant and his girlfriend were the only ones who knew, and if only more people - as in viewers - had known, it might have gone to a full season.Due to a) budgetary concerns and b) this being before morphing, viewers only ever saw him change into THREE animals - usually a panther or a hawk (both realised quite well by Stan Winston), but for the episode "Scrimshaw" we saw him turn into a snake to rescue Brooke (the show's token female) from a sinkhole. This repetition and the need to hide other changes as a result (in the show where he became a horse we had to make do with sound effects) must have bored viewers, though the actual scripts can't have helped... safe to say we won't be seeing a movie version of this one.This is, however, not as painful to watch as some of Glen Larson's other shows after leaving Universal. Or would you really rather see "NightMan" than this? Thought not.

Manimal was absolute rubbish! It should have been called "MINIMAL!" because he only ever changed into a panther or a hawk! Simon McCorkindale is not a bad actor so why did he agree to star in this sad show (money perhaps?!)? A very bad show with absolutely nothing going for it-watching paint dry on a wall is more exciting than this!