These 7 Underrated Martial Arts TV Shows Deserve More Love

Martial arts TV shows often go bitterly underappreciated, with many excellent series focusing on Eastern hand-to-hand combat falling by the wayside over the years. The best martial arts movies prove the genre as one of the most ubiquitous in the entire medium of cinema, with legions of excellent installments coming out of both the East and West. However, TV shows are often under-represented when it comes to martial arts, with the best of them often being tragically obscure.

Granted, some great martial arts TV shows have managed to arrive at a nearly mainstream level of success. But the difficulty of consistently arranging impressive hand-to-hand fight scene choreography on an episodic basis can prove to be a taxing challenge, especially to keep up in the long run. To this day, far too many amazing series featuring harrowing displays of martial arts mastery and athleticism have gone woefully under-appreciated.

7

Kung Fu: The Legend Continues

A modern reboot of a 70s classic

It was still early on enough in the popularization of martial arts media in the West in the 70s that the original Kung Fu was able to nab such a generic title. Pulling double duty as a Western TV series as well as a martial arts show, Kung Fu features David Carradine of Kill Bill fame as a former Shaolin monk wandering around the Wild West. In his adventures, he puts his impressive kung fu skills to good use against a variety of weekly bad guys.

Despite the poorly-aged element of David Carradine, a white man, playing a half-Chinese martial artist in a time period in which East Asians were maliciously oppressed in the United States, Kung Fu was rebooted in 1993 with Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Here, a descendant of the original protagonist, Kwai Chang Caine, undergoes similar adventures as his predecessor in the modern day. Just as full of philosophical musings and thrilling unarmed combat, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues is certainly worthy of the legacy it inherits.

6

Wu Assassins

A shining example of a movie actor transitioning into TV

Despite airing relatively recently, Wu Assassins is still an undersung martial arts show that needs more attention. Martial artist and actor Iko Uwais of The Raid fame stars as Kai-Jin, a simple chef in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. Jin learns he is destined for combat due to his hidden heritage as a Wu Assassin, imbued with the power and skill of 1,000 monks who place their collective consciousness in a mystical amulet. It’s up to Jin to stop the five Wu Warlords, modern-day criminals using ancient powers of classical Chinese elements to wreak havoc on the world.

As always, Iko Uwais is thrilling here, leveraging his very real martial arts skill to its full advantage with many thrilling fight scenes. The supernatural elements also allow for some larger-than-life superhero-scale battles that get creative with the environment and stakes. The plot might not be much to write home about, but Wu Assassins deserves more credit for the excitement of its action setpieces alone.

5

Xiaolin Showdown

Should have become a beloved cartoon

It isn’t only live-action martial arts series that go unfairly overlooked by the general pop culture zeitgeist. Enter Xiaolin Showdown, a creative Western cartoon that took heavy inspiration from Wuxia martial arts movies, combining their appeal with traditional pop culture. Like Wu Assassins, the show revolves around a group of elemental warriors imbued with powerful gifts.

Omi and the rest of the Dragon Warriors battle the forces of Heylin evil over the Shen Gong Wu, artifacts that grant a wide variety of different powers. These battles were often in the form of a Xiaolin Showdown, a mystical sort of game that would trigger upon two sides claiming a Shen Gong Wu at the same time. Between the creativity of the contest-oriented fights, the worldbuilding, and the ahead-of-its-time humor, it’s a crying shame that Xiaolin Showdown is one of the most underrated animated shows ever released in the West.

4

The Master

Proved an old dog can learn new tricks

The famous Western star Lee Van Cleef might be better known as the steely Angel Eyes in Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, but his TV career took a far different route. The Master posits Lee Van Cleef as a ninja master teaching a promising student the arts of ninjutsu. Not unlike then-contemporary series The A-Team, most episodes featured the duo driving around in a secret van base helping out those in need and taking out bad guys.

It’s incredibly fun to see Lee Van Cleef in a more heroic role, passing on his knowledge to a younger, more impulsive hero. The series isn’t just low-brow action either, focusing on a wide variety of philosophical concepts that come with the territory of martial arts. But it’s the master-student dynamics between Van Cleef’s character and his protege that keep The Master relentlessly entertaining, even if it is a tad derivative of other popular shows at the time of its conception.

3

Street Justice

An underrated showcase for an action movie legend

The iconic filmography of Carl Weathers, sporting such gems as Predator and Rocky, might be the far more recognizable place to find the beloved action film star. However, few are privy to Weathers’ slick martial arts series Street Justice, which ran from 1991 to 1993. The show features Weathers as Adam Beaudreaux, a mysterious vigilante cop who doles out his own idea of justice to criminals using his impressive martial arts skills.

With so many crime procedurals coming out in the early 90s, it’s no wonder that Street Justice isn’t better known. This is a real shame considering just how charming Weathers is in the role, navigating tense cases and chopping up bad guys with his impressive physique. Still exciting even by modern standards, Street Justice is a great watch for anyone seeking some adrenaline-fueled martial arts action on a TV scale.

2

Highlander: The Series

Fixed the ruination of a franchise

It isn’t just hand-to-hand combat that falls under the umbrella of martial arts, with swordplay being another valuable facet of the genre. After the release of the disastrous sequel, Highlander II: The Quickening, the famously blade-heavy Highlander series desperately needed a win. Luckily, Highlander: The Series was there to pick up the pieces, wiping away the damage done by the cinematic sequel and starting a new continuity following the end of the first film.

Christopher Lambert’s immortal Connor MacLeod briefly appears in the first episode to pass the reigns to his relative, Duncan, who is secretly revealed to be a younger immortal of about 400 years of age. After living in hiding among the humans, Duncan is finally forced into the deadly game of cat-and-mouse swordfights across history that the other ancient warriors revel in. Perhaps there should have been only one Highlander movie, but the TV show is a worthy follow-up that features some impressive bladework and captivating drama.

1

Chop Socky Chooks

A lesser known kung fu comedy from Aardman Animations

Though the works of Aardman Animations are often more popularly represented by adorable English stop-motion films like Flushed Away and the Wallace & Gromit series, the studio actually stepped a good deal out of its comfort zone with a little-known 3-D animated martial arts series. Chop Socky Chooks is a bizarre series that takes place in a giant city-sized shopping mall called Wasabi World, owned and operated by the evil Dr. Wasabi.

The Chop Socky Chooks themselves are a plucky trio of chickens who fight with various styles of kung fu, putting a stop to Dr. Wasabi’s insidious schemes whenever they can, as well as battling various other villains. The animation style and nonsensical world of Chop Socky Chooks may be far from focus-group-tested, but that doesn’t stop the show from being a fun and exciting celebration of various martial arts movie tropes. It’s safe to say there will never be another martial arts series quite like it.