The Greatest American Hero was an early 1980s superhero show. It lasted for 3 seasons and was better known for the theme song (which was on the Top 40 charts for 18 weeks and just missed being #1) than for the show. The shows was an action comedy and had more in common with other similar shows from around that time (such as The Fall Guy where there would be action chasing a bad guy each episode lightened up with some humor) then any previous superhero shows. I loved it when I was 10, but was it any good.

It’s cheesy as hell. The basic premise was teacher Ralph Hinkley (William Katt) and FBI agent Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp) encountered some aliens out in the middle of the desert one night. They gave Ralph a superhero suit to help protect the planet. But Ralph loses the instruction booklet. So he has a superhero costume that gives him super powers, but he has no idea how to really use it. The enduring clip is Ralph flying through the air looking like he is about to tumble head over heels until he crashes into something to stop. The two of them would spend time each episode trying to catch some bad guy that Bill’s FBI team was after. They were aided by Ralph’s girlfriend Pam Davidson (Connie Selleca) in their adventures.

Reality intervened a couple weeks after the pilot episode when John Hinkley tried to assassinate President Reagan. For the rest of season 1, Ralph was known and Mr. H or Ralph Haney. It was switched back to Hinkley for the remaining seasons.

The special effects are typical for a low-budget weekly TV series in the early 80s. And by that I mean they were cheesy as hell. The show plots are fairly straight forward and not subtle at all. The episodes don’t really hold up well except as a relic of an earlier, simpler time. One episode had Ralph and Bill get the instruction book back after a meeting with the aliens (where they show how their race destroyed their planet), but the suit was lost to Nazi’s (complete with Nazi flags and pictures of Hitler on the wall). There are no subplots or B stories or anything other than a straight forward action comedy story. The end up losing the instructions again when Ralph shrinks down and the returns to normal size without holding the book, leaving it ant size and lost again.

It’s worth a look if you catch the reruns on TV. SyFy showed a marathon on the 4th of July, so hopefully we’ll see more of it in the future. But if you do buy the series, go for the
boxed set with the and instruction book.