Im a huge Robocop fan. The original "Robocop" is a sci-fi classic, "Robocop 2" was a pretty good follow-up but suffered from a messy script and post-production issues, "Robocop 3" is complete garbage and it deserves all the hate it got, the cartoons were clearly for younger audience: the one from the 80's was harmless but very goofy as well, but the 90's series "Robocop: Alpha Commando" on the other hand is like what-were-they-thinking?!, turning robocop into "Inspector Gadget" wanna-bee!?, and don't get me started on that god-awful dumpster-fire known as "prime-directive" mini-series, with it's crap acting, poor pacing, convoluted and boring 4-part storyline. The 2014 reboot was a joke. A soulless cash-cow that removed the satire on American culture, gone any emotion from man-to-machine, almost all the actors are miscasts, changing his iconic suit from silver to black with a red visor for Robocop was a very stupid idea that makes him look generic iron-man knock-off, and being a very safe PG-13 dumb-down and by-the-numbers.
the TV series sadly came out during the post-Robocop 3 phase where the franchise become more family friendly and the violence have been completely toned-down and blood-less. the tv series never had a chance to succeed after one season due to its high production costs, terrible time-slots and poor/confusing marketing. when i was younger they use to sell bootleg VHS of the 2-hour pilot titled as "Robocop 4" which confused me at the time. Forced under TV restrictions to keep the robocop under TV-PG as possible. if you can ignore the removal of the over-the-top violence and strong language from the first 2 films it has a much better writing and focus then Robocop 2 or 3. taking the advantage from the restrictions to focus on the character development. both film sequels were written by comic-book legend frank miller but the studio didn't approve his strange script and changed 70% of it which explains why the story-structure is all over the place in both films. the social satire is back but more sillier then the previous films. Richard Eden is the third actor to play peter weller's iconic role "Alex Muphy/Robocop", Eden gave a very solid performance as the title character unlike Robert John Burke from "Robocop 3" who gave probably lousiest performance out of the bunch (2014's Joel Kinnaman's wooden performance came very close as the worst). his robotoic tone sound more believable and he tries his best to mimic weller's robocop. the timeline of the series ignores the sequels and a direct continuation of the first film which explains why the Old Men/Chairman of OCP (played by a different actor) did not turn 180 degrees and become villain like he did in Robocop 2.
the supporting characters are likable except the annoying young girl named gadget (which is already a stupid name to begin with) which has no reason to be in the series other then be the focus group pet (like many shows at that time to shoehorn a child character down you're throut). However for some bizarre legal reasons they were unable the use some of the other characters names, robocop's partner Anne Lewis was named changed to Lisa Madigan played by Yvette Nipar and the Detroit police Sargent Warren Reed was named changed to Stanley Parks played by Blu Mankuma. Most of them are the same characters from the films just different names. The villains are very comic-book type with over-the-top acting and being creepy. Mostly former/corrupt OCP employees, punks or scientists. it's a shame they didn't included another robocop or a cyborg to raise the bar a little, since the series was already expensive for a prime-time series costing around 1 million per-episode which was a big deal back then plus shooting in Canada to save on production cost (you can tell at times it doesn't even look old-Detroit)
the pros: it's faithful in tone to the original film, the social satire with the news/in-show commercials are back, writing staff did a really good job under the TV restrictions and even better then the sequels, the production values are surprisingly high for a 90's TV series, some of the cast did a decent job and it has some very good episodes.
the cons: the episodic nature, they do link but loosely from returning villain or OCP related. There are some few "stinker" episodes when it's focused on child characters and less on robocop, and probably the biggest con (more like the elephant in the room) of the series, is the lack of blood and violence, robocop barley uses his gun throughout the series, some mild punching, some characters do get killed but very TV standardish. Overall if you're a hardcore fan of robocop or willing to ignore the obvious lack of R-rated violence and language, this series is pretty decent.
the TV series sadly came out during the post-Robocop 3 phase where the franchise become more family friendly and the violence have been completely toned-down and blood-less. the tv series never had a chance to succeed after one season due to its high production costs, terrible time-slots and poor/confusing marketing. when i was younger they use to sell bootleg VHS of the 2-hour pilot titled as "Robocop 4" which confused me at the time. Forced under TV restrictions to keep the robocop under TV-PG as possible. if you can ignore the removal of the over-the-top violence and strong language from the first 2 films it has a much better writing and focus then Robocop 2 or 3. taking the advantage from the restrictions to focus on the character development. both film sequels were written by comic-book legend frank miller but the studio didn't approve his strange script and changed 70% of it which explains why the story-structure is all over the place in both films. the social satire is back but more sillier then the previous films. Richard Eden is the third actor to play peter weller's iconic role "Alex Muphy/Robocop", Eden gave a very solid performance as the title character unlike Robert John Burke from "Robocop 3" who gave probably lousiest performance out of the bunch (2014's Joel Kinnaman's wooden performance came very close as the worst). his robotoic tone sound more believable and he tries his best to mimic weller's robocop. the timeline of the series ignores the sequels and a direct continuation of the first film which explains why the Old Men/Chairman of OCP (played by a different actor) did not turn 180 degrees and become villain like he did in Robocop 2.
the supporting characters are likable except the annoying young girl named gadget (which is already a stupid name to begin with) which has no reason to be in the series other then be the focus group pet (like many shows at that time to shoehorn a child character down you're throut). However for some bizarre legal reasons they were unable the use some of the other characters names, robocop's partner Anne Lewis was named changed to Lisa Madigan played by Yvette Nipar and the Detroit police Sargent Warren Reed was named changed to Stanley Parks played by Blu Mankuma. Most of them are the same characters from the films just different names. The villains are very comic-book type with over-the-top acting and being creepy. Mostly former/corrupt OCP employees, punks or scientists. it's a shame they didn't included another robocop or a cyborg to raise the bar a little, since the series was already expensive for a prime-time series costing around 1 million per-episode which was a big deal back then plus shooting in Canada to save on production cost (you can tell at times it doesn't even look old-Detroit)
the pros: it's faithful in tone to the original film, the social satire with the news/in-show commercials are back, writing staff did a really good job under the TV restrictions and even better then the sequels, the production values are surprisingly high for a 90's TV series, some of the cast did a decent job and it has some very good episodes.
the cons: the episodic nature, they do link but loosely from returning villain or OCP related. There are some few "stinker" episodes when it's focused on child characters and less on robocop, and probably the biggest con (more like the elephant in the room) of the series, is the lack of blood and violence, robocop barley uses his gun throughout the series, some mild punching, some characters do get killed but very TV standardish. Overall if you're a hardcore fan of robocop or willing to ignore the obvious lack of R-rated violence and language, this series is pretty decent.