The BEST Episodes of Starsky & Hutch
Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!
Last Updated: Oct 7, 2020
Network: ABC (US)
Tough Starsky and educated Hutch are plainclothes cops taking on dope dealers, muggers and other thugs, aided by their red 1974 Torino and informant Huggy Bear. Both bachelors' private lives play as interweaving threads in the drama. This was TV's coolest buddy cop show, fueled by full-throttle car chases, offbeat humour, colourful characters and a hip vibe.
#1 - Strange Justice
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired Oct 24, 1978
When his daughter is raped, long-standing, veteran Detective Slate is devastated, and shoots her attacker, who's been brought in for questioning. With the wounded rapist looking like he'll get off scott-free and Slate facing serious charges, the distinguished Lieutenant takes the law into his own hands to get even with his daughter's assailant - and it's up to Starsky and Hutch to stop him in time...
10.00 
#2 - The Avenger
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired Oct 31, 1978
The intrepid Detectives investigate a woman's claims that a jealous brief acquaintance from San Francisco has followed her to the city and is responsible for the vicious murders of a string of the her lovers. But there is a sinister twist to the case, and Starsky unknowingly places himself in great danger...
10.00 
#3 - Ninety Pounds of Trouble
Season 4 - Episode 16 - Aired Feb 6, 1979
When a contract is put out to kill a top union official, Starsky and Hutch go undercover as hit men to protect him. But while Hutch rehearses his performance as a trigger man, Starsky is plagued by a young admirer who may compromise his cover.
10.00 
#4 - Starsky's Lady (a.k.a. Revenge; a.k.a. Snowball)
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired Feb 12, 1977
Crazed killer Prudholm returns to extract his revenge on Starsky, who he blames for the death of his son while in Police custody. By targeting Starsky's beloved girl-friend, making sure that she is shot in a supermarket heist, leaving her with a bullet fragment lodged in her brain and facing impending death...
9.50 
#5 - Murder Ward
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired Oct 8, 1977
The intrepid cops go undercover at a mental hospital, with Starsky as a patient and Hutch as an orderly, to investigate a number of mysterious patient deaths that have occurred at the asylum. With a female journalist, also undercover as a patient, they uncover that someone in the hospital is illegally using patients as human guinea-pigs for the testing of behaviour modification drugs...
9.00 
#6 - Manchild on the Streets
Season 3 - Episode 12 - Aired Dec 10, 1977
When a friend of Starsky and Hutch's is wrongfully shot dead by a rookie Cop after the drunk driving of the man's pal leads to a Police pursuit, the pair must do their best to steer his confused teenage son away from a life of crime, as he grows intent on avenging his father's needless death and becomes involved with a small-time thief...
9.00 
#7 - The Action
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired Jan 7, 1978
Starsky and Hutch set out to bust an illegal gambling ring behind the brutal beating of a friend after he failed to pay off his debts. The duo end up playing for very high stakes as they infiltrate the illegal club, run from a mobile casino in the back of an 18-wheeled truck...
8.67 
#8 - The Velvet Jungle
Season 2 - Episode 22 - Aired Mar 5, 1977
An illegal immigrant witnesses the murder of a co-worker who was threatening to expose the illegal activities of crooked Immigration officials, and is forced to hide out in fear as she too is now hunted by the killer. The detective duo step in to investigate and uncover an illegal-alien smuggling operation...
8.60 
#9 - Blindfold
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired Sep 26, 1978
Responding to a jewellery store robbery, Starsky is distraught when he accidentally shoots an art student caught in the cross-fire, costing the girl her sight. Guilt-stricken, he forcefully strikes up friendship with the blinded young woman, without confessing that he's the law officer that caused her to loose her vision. But their subsequent relationship soon proves to be very dangerous, as someone seems determined to keep him away from her, and Hutch comes to question just how much of a chance by-stander she really was in the incident...
8.60 
#10 - Survival
Season 2 - Episode 18 - Aired Feb 5, 1977
After Hutch plays the key part in a successful undercover operation to nail a wanted racketeer, the captured felon hires a hit-man to prevent Hutch from testifying in court. The assassin runs him off the road and down an embankment, leaving Hutch trapped under the wreckage of his car, near death, in a desolate area, while Starsky desperately searches for his missing partner...
8.60 
#11 - Fatal Charm
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired Sep 24, 1977
While Starsky, Hutch and Officer Linda Baylor are working on an operation to trap a wanted drug dealer, Hutch receives a minor wound, and reports to hospital, where he meets nurse Diana Harmon. After they meet later at a bar, they spend a romantic evening together. But when afterwards Hutch, concerned by her possessive ways, doesn't plan to continue with the relationship, Diana starts displaying unbalanced, obsessive behaviour that not only jeopardises the Police operation, but puts Hutch in great danger...
8.50 
#12 - Death in a Different Place
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired Oct 15, 1977
The intrepid detective partners investigate when a colleague - an old friend of Starsky's - is found dead in a sleazy red-light district hotel, and are shocked to uncover that the married murdered Lieutenant was a closet homosexual with a history of gay relationships. But just who is behind his death, and why?
8.50 
#13 - The Heroes
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired Oct 29, 1977
The streetwise cops are disgruntled when they are assigned to have a newspaper journalist accompany them for a couple of days, until they learn that the reporter is an attractive woman. As they try to trace a drug supplier who is poisoning the narcotics he pushes, the pair go all out to impress the reporter, but when she misunderstands their often unorthodox Policing methods, the woman writes a very unfavorable article about them...
8.50 
#14 - Deckwatch
Season 3 - Episode 23 - Aired May 17, 1978
A serial killing seaman, who preys on prostitutes, is badly shot during his latest attack. Wounded and on the run, he resorts to holding Hutch's friend and her wheelchair-bound mother hostage in their home. Hutch poses as a paramedic to get inside the house as he and Starsky try to apprehend the desperate killer and safely free the hostages...
8.50 
#15 - Dandruff
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired Nov 14, 1978
The Detective pair are working undercover at a plush hotel as effeminate hair-dressers Mr. Marlene and Tyrone, to trim the plans of an international master thief known as The Baron, who is expected to strike at the private auction of a highly valuable cache of diamonds...
8.50 
#16 - Starsky & Hutch on Playboy Island (a.k.a. Murder on Voodoo Island) (1)
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired Sep 17, 1977
First half of a feature-length / two-part story. Tough Detectives Starsky and Hutch are assigned to go undercover on the luxurious, tropical Playboy Island to investigate the mysterious happenings connected to William Thorne, "the richest man in the world", who lives a reclusive life on the island, and who's associates are being murdered with what appears to be voodoo magic...
8.40 
#17 - Bust Amboy (a.k.a. Nightlight)
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired Oct 23, 1976
The detective pair are determined to nail the wealthy Amboy, a crafty narcotics dealer who is supplying young prostitutes, and always avoids police arrest with legal loop-holes...
8.36 
#18 - Savage Sunday
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired Sep 10, 1975
An elderly couple, desperate to draw attention to the poor living conditions in their old folks home, have rigged the trunk of their car with fifty sticks of dynamite and a timer, planning to set it off outside City Hall. But the car is stolen by two thugs on a spree of armed liquor store robberies, unaware that the car is loaded with explosives, ticking towards detonation in the trunk. Starsky and Hutch initially are on the hunt for the two robbers – when they learn that the car is rigged with dynamite, they have mere hours to track it down before disaster strikes...
8.24 
#19 - I Love You, Rosey Malone
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired Oct 1, 1977
Two Senate Investigative Committee agents want Starsky to strike up romance with a beautiful young woman he met while out jogging, in order to get close to her and extract information about her syndicate figure father. But as Starsky enters the "undercover relationship", he falls blissfully in love with the girl for real - and the two agents are manipulating them both...
8.20 
#20 - Hutchinson - Murder One (a.k.a. Hutchinson for Murder One)
Season 3 - Episode 19 - Aired Feb 22, 1978
Out of the blue, Hutch's estranged former wife Vanessa suddenly contacts him, attempting to rekindle their relationship. Hutch doesn't want to know, until Vanessa claims that she's ill with a cancerous tumour. But the next day, Vanessa is murdered in Hutch's apartment – and Hutch is the prime suspect. With two Internal Affairs agents investigating and seemingly convinced that Hutch is guilty, Starsky must help his partner trace the real culprits in order to clear his name...
8.20 
#21 - Partners
Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired May 3, 1978
Starsky's reckless driving in pursuit of two robbers lands both himself and Hutch in hospital, with Hutch seemingly suffering from amnesia, unable to remember his partner or anything about their jobs. Starsky reminds him of some of their past adventures in an attempt to revive his memory…
8.20 
#22 - The Game
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired Sep 19, 1978
When they blow the capture of a wanted felon, Starsky and Hutch each blame the other, and lay down a bet to see whether or not Hutch can successfully elude Starsky for a whole weekend. But the exercise in hide-and-seek becomes more than just a game when Starsky realises that Hutch has unknowingly eaten contaminated soup, and could die from the potentially lethal botulism poisoning. It's a race against time as Starsky struggles to locate Hutch to warn him, but Hutch, unawares to the poisoning, assumes it's all part of Starsky's attempts to draw him out, and dons a number of disguises in order to stay one step ahead...
8.17 
#23 - The Psychic
Season 2 - Episode 15 - Aired Jan 15, 1977
Huggy introduces the detective duo to a friend of his, opening up a new cafe, who unwittingly has clairvoyant visions. Starsky is sceptical of such psychic ability, Hutch more willing to believe, but the psychic's predictions start to come true when his visions tie in to the whereabouts of a wealthy businessman's kidnapped teenage daughter, who is being held for a large ransom...
8.00 
#24 - Huggy Can't Go Home (a.k.a. Huggy Can't Go Back)
Season 4 - Episode 17 - Aired Feb 13, 1979
An illegal poker game puts Huggy Bear in a tight spot - holding a dead man's hand and facing a choice between covering for a friend or obeying the law.
8.00 
#25 - The Fix
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired Oct 8, 1975
Hutch is dating a girl who was formerly associated with a big-time mobster. But Hutch is abducted by the jealous mobster, who forcibly gets him hooked on heroin, in order to find out where the girl is. Starsky must find his friend and the people who did this to him before it is too late and Hutch ends up dead...
7.91