Bionic Woman

Anyone my age (born 1962) living in the UK has surely watched the ‘6 Million Dollar Man’ and the original ‘Bionic Woman’ TV shows. In the seventies we had 3 channels to choose from so everyone watched the same thing and everyone could quote those opening lines: "Steve Austin, a man barely alive…" We thought 6 million dollars a huge amount – now it might just buy you a little two up two down house in London – and I thought the actor Lee Majors inscrutably handsome.

I had a poster of him on my bedroom door ("Put it there, Hazel, don’t want you spoiling the wallpaper") to draw my eye away from the cold blue old lady flower wallpaper on my walls. Later he was joined by a poster of Starsky and Hutch (this one given the honour of masking said wallpaper). I sometimes wonder if Mr Austin influenced my later choice in men as I seemed to keep going for men ‘barely alive’ until, too late, I sussed out the alternative. Lee famously went on to marry Farrah Fawcett so must have got something right himself, but not for long as they were soon parted. Farrah was everything I wasn’t: blonde, tall, lean and soooo American looking – cow!

When the original Bionic Woman came out it gave my strange Great Aunt Annie nightmares. She couldn’t get the hang of the word ‘bionic’ and came up herself with alternative ‘bon-yock’ – which sound to me like it should be a Russian word for some kind of root vegetable you pickle. "Oh," she’d say, "I dreamt last night I was that Bon-yock Woman and I was a-leaping and jumping up into the air ever so high…"

It was with nostalgia I watched the new Bon-yock Woman series which has just started here in the UK. First episode not so bad, the second awful. Apart from Miguel (who I keep getting confused with that Chronicles of Riddick guy, Diesel Truck, or whatever his name is) no one can act. Bon-yock’s just buried her lover, you’d think she’d just been told she’d missed Macey’s Sale. The tough commando guy has a fey sounding speech impediment. MLM (My Lord & Master) doesn’t always get the hang of things and suggested that the actors were bad because they couldn’t afford to pay good actors! Doh! I said, this is HOLLYWOOD, there’s out of work actors everywhere you look who’d work for the same money or less and do a better job. MLM just looked confused…which is more than the Bon-yock actors could manage…