The BEST Episodes of Starsky & Hutch
Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!
Last Updated: Mar 12, 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 - 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...
10.00 
#2 - The Heavyweight
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired Jan 14, 1978
The crime-busting partners meet a one-time boxing champ, now a dockland worker, who witnessed the murder of a Policeman arranged by a dockland racketeer. But the former champ's own life is endangered after he refuses to take a fall in a boxing fight for the vicious racketeer...
10.00 
#3 - 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...
10.00 
#4 - Moonshine
Season 4 - Episode 5 - Aired Oct 17, 1978
After they arrest two ploughboys who soon after die of poisoning, the Detective pals pose as country boys in order to track down some Southern moonshiners who have brewed a bad batch of bootleg whiskey. But the ruthless head of the innocent operation is determined to continue pushing the lethal brew at any cost...
10.00 
#5 - 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 
#6 - 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 
#7 - 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...
10.00 
#8 - Starsky's Brother (a.k.a. Starsky's Little Brother)
Season 4 - Episode 12 - Aired Dec 19, 1978
Starsky's younger brother Nick arrives in the city to visit to his elder sibling. But the older Starsky soon has cause for concern that Nick is mixed up in criminal activities, when he is spotted entering a restaurant at the centre of a Federal stake-out that's trying to nail a counterfeiting scam...
10.00 
#9 - The Golden Angel
Season 4 - Episode 13 - Aired Jan 16, 1979
The detectives are assigned to protect a wrestler who has received a death threat, with Starsky going into the ring himself to draw out a suspect.
10.00 
#10 - 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 
#11 - 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...
9.67 
#12 - 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...
9.67 
#13 - Bloodbath
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired Jan 1, 1977
On the day of trial of Simon Marcus, a murderous cult leader that Starsky and Hutch arrested, Starsky is snatched away by the cult leader's followers just before judgement is passed. The vengeful followers will only release him safely if their leader is released without charge. If Simon Marcus is sentenced to prison, then Starsky is sentenced to death. Hutch must find his partner before he is subjected to a deadly ""religious"" ritual, as foreseen in the deranged leader's visions...
9.33 
#14 - 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...
9.33 
#15 - Starsky & Hutch on Playboy Island (a.k.a. Murder on Voodoo Island) (2)
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired Sep 17, 1977
Concluding this feature-length / two-part story. Still undercover at the lush resort of Playboy Island, Starsky and Hutch must find out who is behind the voodoo murders and why, but as they look into the strange goings-on surrounding billionaire recluse William Thorne, they find themselves battling the black magic of a powerful witch doctor...
9.33 
#16 - 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...
9.33 
#17 - 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...
9.33 
#18 - Nightmare
Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired Nov 28, 1976
A gang of rapists who attacked a retarded 19-year-old girl may go free because an ambitious district attorney thinks that the victim's testimony may be worthless in court.
9.25 
#19 - 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...
9.00 
#20 - The Trap
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired Feb 1, 1978
A trip to buy Starsky's expensive new watch ends in chaos as the duo try to catch a tearaway tomboy shoplifter. Soon after, they respond to a call from Huggy after some thugs smashed up his bar demanding information about Hutch and unbeknown to any of them, the pair are being guided into a carefully laid ambush at a desolate farm, in a trap set by a ruthless criminal with an old score to settle with Hutch. Worse still, Joey, the young shoplifting girl, has stowed away in Starsky's car, and ends up trapped with the Detective duo in a barn that will soon be set ablaze...
9.00 
#21 - 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...
9.00 
#22 - 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...
9.00 
#23 - The Groupie
Season 4 - Episode 10 - Aired Nov 28, 1978
Hutch takes the guise of a bumbling swimwear buyer and Starsky poses as an eccentric photographer, as the Detective duo enter the fashion world to stitch up a garment-business racketeering ring. But as they look into the case, they receive an unusual offer of help from a woman eager to get in on the action – unfortunately, she only serves to compromise the undercover investigation...
9.00 
#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.
9.00 
#25 - Murder on Stage 17
Season 2 - Episode 24 - Aired Mar 19, 1977
The dare-devil Detectives work undercover as stunt-men on the set of a new Western movie, in order to investigate a series of suspicious, fatal "accidents" that has befallen several members of a long-standing group of actors known as the 'Wolf Pack', with the head of the group and star of the film fearing that he'll be next. As Starsky and Hutch roll with the punches and blows in their guises as stunt-men, the case leads them to uncover a bizarre story of thwarted stardom and twisted revenge...
8.67