E.A.R.T.H. Force

1 9 9 0 (USA)
3 x 60 minute episodes

This (very) short-lived series, the first casualty of the 1990-1991 season, was a pseudo A-Team-cum-Mission: Impossible with a team – created by dying billionaire Frederick Winter (Robert Coleby) – concerned with the ecological balance of the environment, travelling all around the globe using guerrilla tactics to prevent ecological catastrophes.

The organisation – Earth Alert Research Tactical Headquarters (E.A.R.TH) –  was staffed by trauma care expert John Harding (erstwhile Buck Rogers, Gil Gerard); Dr Carl Dana (Clayton Rohner), a maverick nuclear physicist who had become an environmental activist; marine biologist Catherine Romano (Tiffany Lamb) who was an expert on oil spills; mercenary Charles Dillon (Stewart Finlay-McLennan) who was only in it for the money; and Diana Randall (Joanna Pacula), director of the Earth Alert Foundation that provided the team’s funding.

In the three episodes that made it on air, the E.A.R.T.H team recovered stolen plutonium earmarked for nuclear weapons, stopped animal poachers from selling endangered species on the black market, and prevented unscrupulous developers from building housing on a toxic waste site.

Audiences were not impressed with the heavy-handed messaging or the bad writing, directing, and acting and E.A.R.T.H Force was yanked off the air after just three weeks.

Entertainment Weekly listed the series – filmed in Queensland, Australia – amongst its worst television series of 1990, calling it “self-righteous garbage”.

John Harding MD
Gil Gerard
Dr Carl Dana
Clayton Rohner
Dr Catherine Romano
Tiffany Lamb
Diana Randall
Joanna Pacula
Charles Dillon
Stewart Finlay-McLennan
Frederick Winter
Robert Coleby

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