The slick action series about a self-driving car ran out of gas in its ludicrous third season. Turns out there is such a thing as too much Hoff

A voice-controlled personal assistant in a self-driving car might not seem like too much of a biggie in 2020. But in 1982 it was a thrilling vision of an unimaginably hi-tech, sci-fi future, all packaged up in a sweet black ride with a swishy red sensor on the front.

Knight Rider was the daft US TV show about a talking Trans Am that seemed to take itself very seriously: how else to explain the moody credits sequence in an overcast desert where a growly voiceover heralded “a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist”? The title also seemed extremely enigmatic until you learned that creator Glen A Larson – the prolific TV producer behind Battlestar Galactica, Magnum PI and more – had consciously set out to update the gunslinging-hero serial The Lone Ranger, swapping out faithful nag Trigger for a four-wheeled justice-mobile called the Knight Industries Two Thousand (Kitt).

The guy in the saddle this time was David Hasselhoff, an easygoing soap actor thrilled to have finally secured a headline gig. If his Knight Rider character had a knotty backstory – a crusading cop shot in the head and left for dead, resurrected with a new face and identity by an eccentric tech billionaire – the part basically just needed someone who could look unselfconscious while constantly talking to themselves. While he never seemed to master doing up his top three shirt buttons, Hasselhoff excelled as the goofball do-gooder Knight, his brawny cheesiness a ripe counterpoint to the urbane Kitt (voiced by the St Elsewhere star William Daniels).

This was a slick, action-orientated series where Michael and Kitt dutifully helped the downtrodden, thwarting white-collar crooks and greedy hoodlums alike with the judicious application of turbo-boosted stunt jumps. But something about the cool autonomous car, the hunky lead and – let’s admit it – the kick-ass theme tune cut across language barriers, turning Knight Rider into a tangible global hit that kept its foot to the floor for 90 episodes over four seasons.

With such a deliberately formulaic approach, and baddies-of-the-week banged up by the end of each instalment, when did it demonstrably run out of gas? Was it the season three finale where Michael and Kitt joined the circus? Or the season four episode where they were targeted by ninjas? Your mileage may vary, but it felt as if the wheels fell off when Knight Rider dabbled with serialisation. The opening episode of the second season introduced Garthe Knight, the estranged son of Kitt’s creator who looked suspiciously like Michael Knight with an evil moustache (likely because he was also played by Hasselhoff in full panto mode). Turns out there really is such a thing as too much Hoff: when Garthe and his supposedly indestructible truck Goliath turned up again toward the end of the season, it felt like a lazy, self-cannibalising move rather than a highly anticipated rematch. After that second clash, Kitt remarked: “I’d rather be turned into a toaster oven than go through that again.” Not for the first time, the self-parking smartypants had a point.