Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep1 – Manimal
First Aired: 30 September 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: Jonathan Chase is a British college professor at New York University who has the unusual ability to transform into any kind of animal he wants. He decides to use his power to assist the New York Police Department in solving unusual crimes, and in this series pilot, he teams up with cute cop Brooke and war buddy Ty to stop some terrorists from stealing a supply of toxic gas.

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Manimal to Become A Series

Congratulations to Simon.  His pilot movie, Manimal, was picked up by NBC to become a regular fall series.  He is signed to do thirteen episodes (12 plus the pilot), which will air in the former Knight Rider time slot on Friday nights.  Michael Knight and Kit are moving to Sunday nights.  We wish Simon much success with his very own TV series.

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Manimal

It’s a bird; It’s a plane! No – it’s a Manimal? Actually folks, MANIMAL is the title of a band new NBC movie of the week, staring – of course, SIMON!

Simon plays Jonathan Chase, a professor of animal behaviorisms, who, with the help of his partner (Glynn Turman) and a lady police officer, (Melody “Flash Gordon” Anderson) fights crime in New York City. Equipped with mystic powers inherited from his father, which include exceptional hearing and eyesight, Jonathan is also able to change into animals at will, and uses this to his advantage.

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SIMON MACCORKINDALE

Merely transforming into a wide variety of animals from a black leopard to a high flying hawk should pose no problem to British star Simon MacCorkindale, who stars as Jonathan Chase in the 20th Century-Fox Television series, “Manimal.”

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Simon MacCorkindale tends to play undemonstrative English gentlemen and while women have been known to find him sexy, ‘animal’ is not the word one would think of to describe him. He’s civilised (even though he now lives in Los Angeles – or, at least, as he says, ‘that’s where all my belongings are – my home is wherever I am!) So there is something piquant about his playing a professor who, to fight crime, transforms himself into a protean variety of animal shapes. He had thought that he would be able to devote a lot of time to his own projects; writing and directing are his first loves. ‘I thought I would be an animal a lot of the time and wouldn’t need to be there.’ Instead he found himself working a 16-hour-day six days a week, spending hours being made up for the transformation scenes, while the human part of the role got larger and larger. ‘I was never off the set. I was hoist by my own petard!’ All actors should learn from this – being an animal is even worse than working with one.