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By Sid Adilman
American actor Jan Michael Vincent cheerfully visited Vancouver the other day to be critically injured.
Ernest Borgnine refused to show up to be killed in a helicopter crash. He was blown up off screen.
Their departure clears the way for the most bizarre "Canadian-content" TV series of this or any other year. This story might make for a wicked satire of rules for Canadian TV, if it weren't all true.
Airwolf, in which Vincent and Borgnine starred, was axed after a season and a half by CBS in the United States because of low ratings.
MCA-TV, a subsidiary of the billion-dollar American movie and TV empire that owns 50 per cent of Canada's Cineplex Odeon, had deficit financed the 54 episodes that cost $1.2 million each. That probably made Airwolf the most expensive U.S. TV series ever made. By the time of the cancellation, MCA-TV had recouped only one-third its investment.

 Liberal regulations

Considered too expensive to junk, Airwolf just had to continue. So along came liberal Canadian-content regulations to the rescue.
MCA sold the show's copyright to Toronto's Academy Award-winning Atlantis Films - to be officially Canadian, a Canadian company must have copyright - and Airwolf lives on.
Another 24 hour-long episodes are filming in British Columbia, with mainly Canadian cast, Canadian technicians, directors, and a majority of Canadian-written scripts - at an incredibly reduced cost: $1.3 million (Canadian) for all 24 shows.
Airwolf was basically a hardware show: a nuclear-powered super helicopter taking its former CIA officer-squad to trouble spots around the world to ferret out villains. Resemblance to the action movie Blue Thunder and TV's Mission Impossible is intentional.
The series cannot exist without the specially outfitted Bell 222 helicopter. Airwolf II doesn't have it, only a mini mock-up tucked at the back of a rented studio.
Scripts are being written specifically to fit action footage filmed when the show was on CBS and presumed to continue for years. "All scripts are being tailored to the footage," says Canadian producer Jonathan Goodwill. "We have rights to all of it; they banked a tremendous amount.
"Any action sequences that can't be matched, such as car chases and factory explosions, we're doing here.
"We're paying more attention to the characters. It's cheaper to film people than to blow things up all the time. Besides, you can't blow people up for 48 minutes. So, we're making viewers stay around for 35 minutes for the payoff, the fire and brimstone.
"If there was one flaw in the original Airwolf, it was too much reliance on hardware. We don't have much money to do that." Plots remain the same: derring-do with evil Third World nations, international arms dealers, fanatical groups in the U.S., and tracking Soviet spies.
"TV is very derivative," Goodwill says, "but that doesn't mean it can't be exciting." Recasting the lead characters was as improbable as Airwolf becoming Canadian. American Barry Van Dyke plays Jan Michael Vincent's long-lost brother, referred to in the first series but never seen; Michele Scarabelli is the Borgnine character's niece who inherits his helicopter business; and Geraint Wyn Davies is the new guy. An MCA-TV representative is on hand every day.
Airwolf II will be seen on a small American pay TV service: no Canadian TV network has picked it up. Global, for example, turned it down. Atlantis Films co-founder Michael MacMillan said one possibility is sale to a number of private stations across the country.
The day I was on the set, a new Mediterranean-designed apartment building, the action was restricted to walking. Only one co-star was there. Van Dyke (Galactica 1980) and Canadian co-stars Wyn Davies, recruited from the Stratford Festival, and Anthony Sherwood had the day off.
Honey-blonde Toronto actress Scarabelli rehearsed entering a room, while villain-of-the-week, Toronto actor George Touliatos, pulled a gun on her.
In this episode, she posed as an apartment janitor to track a Soviet spy with a secret microchip on which the fate of the world rests.
"I've been thrown in a Bulgarian prison (mocked up in the rented studio)," she said with a smile, "and in each scene I come back on camera more brutalized. It's not a glamor show.
"Series usually don't give a two or three-year contract right off the bat. This is a six-month contract. I thought quite a bit about taking it. What image would Airwolf be for me? I decided I know who I am."
Besides, she admitted, it's regular work, which many Canadian actors lack. Shooting of the 24 episodes began in October and continue to April.
The original producer was lambasted by American TV unions for moving the show to Canada and the Canadian TV industry was flabbergasted by the new Canadian citizenship.
But Goodwill said many Vancouver TV personnel are getting steady work. "A big piece of the crew comes from Danger Bay and they're used to working out of doors. B.C. special effects man George Erschbaumer is doing the explosions and he's one of the best powder guys in the business."

 CORRECTION

The budget for all 24 episodes of TV's Airwolf II series filming in Vancouver is $13 million (Canadian), not with a decimal point inserted as in yesterday's editions.
The Star regrets the error.(Nov. 26, 1986, page B1)
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