When I was growing up in the seventies, after a decade of mainly black and white television, there was a plethora of new, colourful, exciting TV dramas: Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Champions, The Persuaders, Kojak…the list goes on.
Most of these of course were American-produced and the industry churned them out to a public hungry for entertainment. A little-known name outside of the TV industry is Iranian director Reza Badiyi, but he deserves recognition from those of us who devoured hours of the aforementioned shows, for Badiyi helmed literally hundreds of hours of episodic TV. He directed more than 430 episodes of television, including multiple episodes of Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, The Incredible Hulk, T.J. Hooker, and Cagney and Lacey.
Badiyi began his American career as a cinematographer, having moved from Iran in 1955 and graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in film-making. He worked with directors such as Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman before moving increasingly into television. No-one would claim Badiyi’s work in the seventies as great works of art but, with their breakthrough visual effects, they were certainly culturally significant for young viewers like myself.
To represent Badiyi’s oeuvre I have chosen the title visualisation (i.e. the opening and closing credits) for Hawaii Five-0. If you were alive in the seventies, there’s a very high probability these images will be very familiar to you. Backed by an irresistible score by Richard Shores, Badiyi used dynamic, zooming photography, copious imagery from Hawaii (the 50th State – Five-0 – get it?), with cool quick-cuts and freeze-frames to set the viewer up nicely for the upcoming crime-defeating drama. Who can forget the fast zoom-in to the top balcony of the Ilikai Hotel, with Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett turning to face the camera?
For the closing credits, Badiyi chose to use these iconic outrigger canoeists battling the surf (anyone remember sitting in a line of like-minded plonkers on a dance floor, paddling like crazy and singing duh-duh-duh-duh duhhhh duhhhh…?)
All in all, a bravura title visualisation by one of the most prolific directors of episodic series television in the history of the medium. Book him, Danno!
