Starsky & Hutch is an American action television series, which consisted of a 72-minute pilot movie (originally aired as a Movie of the Week entry) and 92 episodes of 50 minutes each. The show was created by William Blinn (inspired by the success of the then recent movie Busting), produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions and starred Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul in the title roles, Starsky and Hutch. It was broadcast from April 1975 (pilot movie) to August 1979 on the ABC network.
Starsky & Hutch was distributed by Columbia Pictures Television in the United States. Sony Pictures Television is now the worldwide distributor for the series. The series later inspired a video game and a feature film.
Cast
The series' protagonists were two Southern California police detectives: Sergeant David Michael Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Sergeant Kenneth Richard "Hutch" Hutchinson (David Soul). Starsky is a dark-haired, Brooklyn transplant and U.S. Army veteran, with a street-wise manner and intense, sometimes childlike moodiness. Hutch is the divorced,Episode: "Hutchinson: Murder One" - Ken Hutchinson's ex-wife was featured in this episode blond, Duluth, Minnesota native with a more reserved and intellectual approach. Under the radio call sign "Zebra Three", they were known for usually tearing around the streets of fictional Bay City, California. Much of the series was shot on location in the Los Angeles beach community of San Pedro. The building that was used as the Metropolitan Division police headquarters in the first season is now the City of Los Angeles' San Pedro Neighborhood City Hall.
Supporting characters
The detectives' main confidential informant was the street-wise, ethically ambiguous, "jive-talking" Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas), who often dressed in a flashy manner and operated his own bar (first named "Huggy Bear's", and later, "The Pits"). The duo's boss was the gruff, no-nonsense-but-fair Captain Harold C. Dobey (Bernie Hamilton in the series, and gravel-voiced Richard Ward in the pilot). Series creator William Blinn first used the name Huggy Bear on-screen for a character, also a confidential informant, in an episode penned by Blinn for the TV series The Rookies during the 1973 second season, "Prayers Unanswered Prayers Unheard", there, played by actor Johnny Brown.
Seasons Seasons 1 and 2 In contrast to police characters on American TV in prior years, Starsky and Hutch were open with physical gestures of friendly/brotherly affection toward one another, often declaring that they trusted only each other (in an "us against the world"–type sense). While likely "normal" by American social standards since the 1990s, such body language conflicted with 1970s norms of (emotionally restrained) masculinity. In a show documentary tape made during the show's run that can be found on YouTube, the narrator intones that some Hollywood industry types referred to the characters as "French kissing prime-time homos". Soul verified this statement in a 1999 cast reunion interview in the United Kingdom.
Many fans were attracted not just by the characters, but the quality of writing during the first two seasons (despite the fact that the majority of first-season stories were actually existing scripts that were merely adapted to fit the series). The second-season episode "Long Walk Down a Short Dirt Road", featured country star Lynn Anderson as a singer being stalked by a deranged person, played by Joshua Bryant; it was based upon a real-life incident involving country music legend Dolly Parton. The part was written with Parton in mind, but Anderson wound up playing the role.
Season 1: Starsky & Hutch aired on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. and aired against Kate McShane on CBS and the second season law drama Petrocelli on NBC. Starsky & Hutch had no trouble beating its competition and finished #16 with a 22.5 share in the A.C. Nielsen Ratings.
Season 2: Starsky & Hutch was moved to Saturday night for the second season and was up against tough competition on CBS with The Mary Tyler Moore Show followed by The Bob Newhart Show. NBC had NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. Although the show lost some of their viewers from the move from the Wednesday night time slot from the previous season, Starsky & Hutch held its own, finishing #34 with a 19.6 rating in the Nielsens.
Season 3 In 1977, a rising concern in America about violence on TV, along with Glaser's own concerns about the level of violence in the series, forced the writers to reduce the violent "action" scenes, with more romantically and socially themed storylines, and play-up the "buddy-buddy" aspect of the show's leads even more. At the same time, the lead actors—Glaser in particular—became jaded with the general theme; these and other factors contributed to the fading popularity of the series.
Glaser indicated several times that he wanted to get out of his contract and quit the series; he even sued the producers to force a release from his contract before the start of the third season. It seemed that he would not be returning for filming, so to fill the presumed void, the character "Officer Linda Baylor" (played by Roz Kelly) was created, and a number of alternative scripts featuring her instead of Starsky were written (whether the show's name would have remained the same is unknown). After being granted more creative control over scripts, opportunities to direct episodes, and a per-episode pay raise (to $35,000, up from $5,000), Glaser returned to the show. Ultimately, Officer Baylor only appeared in one episode the episode "Fatal Charm".
Despite this major change in the tone of the show, with a lot of the violence reduced and more of a focus on the friendship of the two leads, viewership remained steady during the season. From September to December 1977, the show stayed in its Saturday-night time slot, now up against The Jeffersons and The Tony Randall Show on CBS and NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. It was the first lead-in to The Love Boat and after its immediate success, The Love Boat was moved up an hour in January 1978 into the 9:00 slot. Having been displaced on Saturday nights, Starsky & Hutch moved back to its original Wednesday-night time slot of 10 p.m. The ratings dropped a little bit, but Starsky & Hutch finished #33 (tied with ABC's Lucan) with a 19.2 Nielsen rating.
Season 4 Glaser again voiced his desires to leave during the fourth and final season. This time, Starsky's wayward younger brother Nick (John Herzfeld) was introduced, in the episode "Starsky's Brother". It was intended that if Glaser was to quit, that the reformed Nick would take David's place on the police force (and allow the series to avoid a title change). Ultimately, the disgruntled Glaser decided to return, yet again, to finish out the season. Although a fifth season was planned, increasing production costs, Glaser's persistent (and oft-publicized) desire to move on, and declining ratings, brought an end to the series.
The final episode, "Sweet Revenge" (which has Starsky fighting for his life after being gunned down), originally had its co-lead dying in the early drafts. The producers decided to have the character survive, as it was felt that a dead Starsky would disrupt the continuity of reruns/syndication, and preclude the option of the producers' reviving the series in the near future. Starsky & Hutch finished #36 in the Nielsen Ratings in its final season. Network reruns continued on ABC on Tuesday nights until August 21, 1979.
Syndication After its prime-time run, Starsky & Hutch was sold into syndication, and has been shown on several local channels and cable networks (e.g., The National Network, and WWME-CA, also known as MeTV, in Chicago). The series made its cable debut on TNT in 1994 and later appeared on TV Land beginning in 2000. In 2015–2016, the series aired on cable's El Rey Network on weekday mornings. Several episodes from the first two seasons can be viewed for free in Minisode and in regular format on Crackle. The show has also been broadcast on Cozi TV and getTV.
List of episodes
Home media Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released 4 Seasons on DVD in Regions 1 and 2 between 2004 and 2006.
Mill Creek Entertainment acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library including Starsky & Hutch in 2013. They re-released the first season on DVD on March 4, 2014.
Mill Creek released Starsky & Hutch - The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1 on November 11, 2014.
DVD Name Ep # Release dates Region 1 Region 2 The Complete 1st Season 23 March 2, 2004March 4, 2014 (re-release) March 15, 2004 The Complete 2nd Season 25 July 20, 2004 July 19, 2004 The Complete 3rd Season 23 March 15, 2005 February 28, 2005 The Complete 4th and Final Season 22 October 17, 2006 February 13, 2006 The Complete Series 93 November 11, 2014 November 20, 2006
International broadcasts On March 15, 1979, in Italy, Starsky and Hutch was aired on Rai Due, achieving smash-hit status. In 1987, it was broadcast again, this time in the late afternoon, on Italia 1 and, in 2007, on Rai Tre at lunchtime. After some reruns on Italia 1 and AXN, in 2009, the series appeared Mondays on Fox Retro. It was aired in the early morning on Rete 4. In Summer 2015, it was aired on La7. In France, the show was shown on TF1 between 1978 and 1984, and subsequently on other channels. The French version replaces the original theme(s) with a French song, singing about "Starsky et Hutch". The voices of Jacques Balutin and Francis Lax, the two French actors dubbing the series, played a part in the popularity of the series in France as well as their adding comedic ad-libs whenever possible. One of the voice-over actors later said that David Soul had acknowledged that he and Paul Michael Glaser had to be much more restrained when they played. In the United Kingdom, the series was an immediate hit when it began showing on Saturday nights on BBC1 (debuting April 23, 1976, and soon catching up with American broadcasts), with occasional repeats through to the early 1990s. During its prime-time run, however, the BBC heavily edited certain episodes; in fact, the first-series episode "The Fix" (in which mobsters inject Hutch with heroin in order to extract information from him) was deemed too graphic and was effectively "banned" from all the corporation's runs of the series. "The Fix" wasn't shown on British-terrestrial television until May 31, 1999, as part of Channel 4's "Starsky & Hutch Night," which also included the pilot, The Word on the Street - a documentary about the series - and the second-series episode "Gillian". The BBC broadcast the series in a different order to the American run, and as the Radio Times listings did not always give episode titles, the exact first-run order for the series is not entirely clear. "Savage Sunday" was omitted from the first Season One broadcast, and there is no listed later airing of the episode. There are also no Radio Times listed airdates for the episodes "Vendetta," "Nightmare," "Bloodbath," or "Murder Ward." The series was rerun by Five in 2003 in a 10 a.m. slot (later 11 a.m., and eventually moving to a 2:30 p.m. slot); was also shown on the UK satellite channel Granada Plus, and is now running on Zone Thriller, which was rebranded as CBS Action in November 2009. The channel has broadcast all episodes, with minor edits in a few cases. In August 2019, the channel True Entertainment, which later became Sony Channel, are now showing repeats. The first season is frequently aired on MBC 2 in the Middle East. In Australia it airs on Digital Channel Go!. In 2014, it started to be shown on 7mate. It was a perennial favourite, seen on the Nine Network from 1975 to 1991 and, lastly, on ABC Television in 1992. Prior to GO!, it screened on TV1. In Indonesia, the show was aired on RCTI from 1990 to 1994. In Malaysia it currently reruns on RTM's TV2, placed in Best of Retro slot, in 2009.