Bad man Pellito (Andy Romano) has kidnapped the son (Trevor O'Brien) of Melody (Marie Marshall), just to make her brother Ross (Scott Jaeck), an air traffic controller, make a plane crash that's supposed to fly Murdock (Tony Maggio) a key witness in a trial against the Pellito organisation into town. But the three (motorbike riding) Musketeers, D'Artagnon (David Hasselhoff), Porthos (Thomas Gottschalk) and Athos (Alison Doody) are on the case, and ultimately free the boy - by (no joke) staging an impromptu David Hasselhoff concert. Now the Musketeers are all descendants of the original Musketeers, still doing good - for some reason in the US by now - in a secret organisation headed by Treville (John Rhys-Davies). But somehow the organisation has lost track of the Aramis family ... until Greg Aramis (Cheech Marin), a small-fry crook, pretty much pops up, and for some reason Treville insists on letting him in.

Back to the main story though, since Murdock  hasn't been killed in a plane crash, the Musketeers are in charge of his security and deliver him to the courthouse. This they successfully do, but as soon as the Feds take him out of the Musketeers hands, he gets assassinated. Now despite Treville's insistance on dropping the case, the Musketeers decide to have their revenge on Pellito, but their plan fails because ... there wasn't much of a plan, really. But they're soon in luck again thanks to Athos' ex Harry (Corbin Bernsen), an undercover cop on Pellito's trail who fears he's been found out and lured to a club to be assassinated. So the Musketeers get jobs at the club to protect Harry undercover. Now this thing turns weird when Harry kills his own hitman and makes an escape, and it turns out he's actually in Pellito's employ. But of course he gets his just desserts for having duped the Musketeers. And ultimately, the Musketeers get their revenge on Pellito, too, when he's to make a diamond drop-off to one of the mob bigwigs (Michael V. Gazzo), and they replace the diamonds for junk, setting him up for a mob-style execution ...

Now the cast alone sounds quite interesting, especially taking into account that Thomas Gottschalk (cast at German broadcaster RTL's insistance) was at the time (and probably still is 30 years later) Germany's most popular game show and talk show host (though his acting talents are limited). But really, as a whole this miniseries deserves little more than curiosity value, as it feels like just any other TV crime show, and lacks any really interesting characters to keep things together, as basically the Musketeers are just do-gooders with no real depth. And likewise their cases are interchangable with any other TV show, as are the situations they get in, their dialogue and anything else. So really, just a bland piece of work that unsusrprisingly enough has created little in terms of ripples upon release.

Note: Ring of the Musketeers exists as both a four part miniseries and a feature length condensed version. This review is based on the condensed version as the whole series is almost impossible to come by these days.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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