A Noble Failure That Keeps Trying to Return: The Story of The Greatest American Hero
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
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The Greatest American Hero is an American comedy-drama superhero television series that aired on ABC from 1981 to 1983.
The Greatest American Hero chronicles Ralph's adventures after a group of aliens gives him a red and black suit that grants him superhuman abilities. Unfortunately he immediately loses its instruction booklet, and thus has to learn how to use its powers by trial and error, often with comical results.
The original series didn't last very long but there have been repeated attempts to get another version of The Greatest American Hero off the ground again but to no avail.
These days the series is probably more known for its theme song, Theme from The Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not), than anything else.
Mego Museum Greatest American Hero video: • Vintage Mego : Greates...
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I was hooked on this show as a kid. I still listen to the theme song on occasion and actually met him a few years ago at my local comic shop!
Same here. I even got my high school band director to give me a copy of the 1st Bb Trumpet part of the song. (This was 1989/1990... so... yeah.)
Nice
I started rewatching it last year but stopped before the end of season two. Funny to see big names like Danny "Daniel" Glover show up in small roles at the beginning of their careers.
The episode where they’re in the haunted house and Ralph gets slashed by that old lady ghost scared the shit out of me as a kid 😂😂
Believe it or not, I'm walkin' on air
I never thought I could feel so free
Flyin' away on a wing and a prayer
Who could it be?
Believe it or not it's just me
Sang this course to school for a while.
The Greatest American Hero was _huge_ to me in my childhood. I was 5-7 when it aired, and I was obsessed with it. So much so that my aunt made a shirt for me with the emblem on the chest. That's right, I had a custom The Greatest American Hero t-shirt when I was a kid, and I wore it _constantly._ I've got all the episodes on DVD (I doubt it'll ever get upgraded for blu-ray.)
I have the DVD box set too!! It's one of my treasures!!
🎵Believe it or not, George isn't at home.
Please leave a message at the beep.
I must be out, or I'd pick up the phone.
Where could I be?
Believe it or not, I'm not home.🎵
Greatest American Hero and Ducktales have the 2 most recognisable theme songs that even people who’ve never seen the shows know.
It's weird how they've soaked so deeply into the zeitgeist.
I mean you know something's iconic when you've never seen a single episode but you know every word in the theme song.
Agreed but I have to add the theme song to Heathcliff.
@@AlthosWTF
Heathcliff, heathcliff no one should terrorize the neighborhood. Whoa, oh oh oh oh oh.
I think I watched a total of one episode of that show but the basic tune and most of the themes lyrics are still embedded in my brain. Fun (but not all that fun) fact that was the very last show Mel Blanc worked on before his death. As a matter of fact he was working on it up to his death and the entire cast agreed no one could possibly replace him so they simply canceled the show. True story.
Ducktales..woo..hoooo
Bionic 6.
here in Italy it was HUGE and well loved... it was called "Ralph Super-Maxi Eroe" and was on tv since 1985 untill 2000 like A-team and Ferrigno's Hulk sometimes with a lot of episodes always in repetition but well received by us as public.
It was popular all over Italy then?
@@btetschner yup!
That is very interesting.
Maybe people here (in the United States) simply did not appreciate its value.
I am not sure if I have ever watched an entire episode, though I have always liked the theme song.
I, for one, am Italy in microcosm here.
@@alanr4447a Do you live in a small village?
I'll never stop loving this series. My teen son has only seen one episode but he sings the theme at least once a week without noticing.
I'll never forget this theme.
It is without a doubt far more iconic than the show itself. (Sorry but not sorry)
Forgive me for momentarily going all shallow, but: my god, I forgot just how stunning Connie Sellecca is.
Yep, I was always happy to see her in an episode
William Katt was also great in the original Carrie, a very underrated actor.
And got vaporized as the priest at Barry and Iris's wedding in the Arrowverse Earth-X Crossover event. "Speak now, or forever hold your peace." - ZAAP. Bet he wished he had the suit on right then, he would have been an asset in the battle.
loved him in Pippin!
was good in Big Wednesday as well
This show was my jam as a kid. I tried explaining the premise to my kids the other day and they just looked at me like I was stupid.
Same.
ya know, i remember the premise and i remember dancing to the theme song in my jammy's in sheer joy! but i dont remember any specific episode. i wonder if i would if i watched it now.
@@tabbysmithfield3794 you might be surprised the little things that come back. I have that happen all the time when I go back to something I haven't watched since I was a kid.
Feel like that’s like most things I try to explain to my kids re:things I watched as a child
Its like Chuck but a little more sillier.
I used to love this show as a girl. I remember a period of time pre-internet in the 90s when no one really remembered the show. Now it falls comfortably into the retro/nostalgia category, but for awhile there, it felt like no one remembered the reluctant superhero in red pjs.
I never watched it because my boomer parents said it was stupid. Now they watch fox news and ancient aliens.
Agreed. I really liked this show too. I must have seen reruns, because I was four in 1981. But yeah, it was this thing I just barely remembered and would ask people about, to blank stares. People did not even know that the theme song came from a show. It's weird when you are the only one that knows about a show that was on one of the three networks that existed at the time. Toy Galaxy to the rescue!
I grew up watching it, too, and the same thing happened to me. Before the Internet and social media, a cancelled show was really cancelled!
@@wanderslostify
I was in a store recently and the radio played the bosom buddies theme. (Or at least what I know it as)
This song is exactly the same.
Most people don't know or care where the song came from but a few people do and that always makes me happy.
No one remembered the show because of the name…. I used to have the hardest time recalling what the show was called and trying to describe it to someone even today wouldn’t strike a cord with most. Honestly the only thing that’s really memorable about the show is the theme song and the lead actor’s striking blond curly hair.
Connie Seleca was really something else back in the day!
She pretty much looks the same today.
She should have played Lois lane in the superman films.
SHE just was on show to look good, not for acting. AND did acting on show.
As a Spanish speaker, this was the first American TV show I watched as a kid. I saw it on syndication in Florida when I was 7 and was hooked on it. I didn't remember the title of the show, but I loved it. It wasn't until 2009 that I rediscovered it on TH-cam.
Love the song too.
At the 25th anniversary reunion event Steven J Cannel said that of all of the television shows that he created, GAH was by far the best selling one on DVD. It had to go back into print several times to keep up with the demand. Unfortunately because of licensing issues (or being to cheep to peruse the rights) all of the DVD releases did not contain the Joey Scarbury cover songs that were in the original broadcast episodes and were replaced with new, crappier “sound-alike” songs for the syndicated and DVD releases. Can you tell I know a lot of worthlessness information about this show?
You and me both! One of my all time favorite shows. If you look up GAH on the Internet Archive, though, they have the pilot and about 12 episodes with the original music that were video taped during syndication in the 80s. Someone put them up on TH-cam a few years back, taped off the Action Channel, sadly, I didn't record them before they were taken down.
Scarbury's cover of Eve of Destruction is fantastic. It's a shame that it and others didn't make the DVDs. Still, there's good songwriting in the replacement songs and I like that they made it obvious that the new songs were homage to the originals. It was tastefully done and showed a lot of craft.
@@PaulBell-ko8mu I really wish I could agree with you, but for me the original music was as important to the integrity of the show as Cannell's writing and Culp's acting was.
@@TheNameisPlissken1981Using the original music was not an option. TGAH did a lot better at substitutions than WKRP. Nothing beats the original songs. I hope you didn't take my comment to mean that I prefer what was done afterwards. I don't. I respect the quality of what was done in the circumstances. It's good songwriting and production. If it was awesome, the new songs would have been stand-alone hits. That was never going to happen and the songs were never intended to be classics. Compared to what I hear on TV shows where they create their own music and try to make is sound familial, Post and the rest of TGAH did a fantastic job.
@@PaulBell-ko8mu I understand. I just wish I felt the same way because I struggle to enjoy certain episodes like Operation Spoilsport without the original music. In fact, I wish they just recycled the 6 or 7 original songs Post and Stephen Geyer did for episodes like Plague, Don't Mess With Jim & Capt. Bellybuster and the Speed Factory instead of using the music that they did use.
One of the greatest theme songs in all of television.
I swear I think if it wasn't for the theme song this show would have been long forgotten. It is without a doubt the most iconic part of this show and the part everyone remembers and knows even people who have never seen or heard of the show.
Cheers was my favorite, but i loved this too
I still sing it constantly
6:47 That's what got me stumped when I was learning Chinese in school because why would Stephen use the Chinese word of "centre" for a logo. Now I know. It's from a pair of scissors lying around. I can't imagine if he used another stationery such as a stapler or paper clip.
Back in the days when you had to wait week to week for your new show. This show definitely brings back the warm fuzzies.
The golden age of TV theme songs - Cheers, WKRP, Greatest American Hero etc
Mike Post had so many smashes that he put out albums. I had one!
Bossom buddies!
Knight Rider, Airwolf, The Dukes of Hazzard, all brilliant.
Unknown Stuntman (Fall Guy) was amazing, too.
I loved this show! The theme song was the first record I'd ever owned. My aunt and I were driving home when it started playing on the radio. I must have mentioned how much I liked the song and show, because we stopped by a local music shop and she bought the single for me. Goodness knows how many times I played it. :D
Thanks for the nostalgia trip!
Yeah such a feel good song and feel good hour of evening TV.
My first record too
Some properties are about those who played the characters and not just the idea 💡 of the property.
If you took all 3 leads and put them say an episode of Love American Style, Amazing Stories or an After School Special the chemistry would likely still exist.
Kindergarten to First Grade favorite 🤩.
Still the best theme song ever. I use it as my morning alarm.
This is one of those shows I remembered from my very early childhood. I remember loving it. And then I decided to re-watch the show about a decade ago and was shocked to discover that it was actually a good show that held up nicely. Such great characters.
Awesome stuff! I watched this series when it originally debuted and loved it. I still hope Mego will do a new action figure version of Ralph in the suit. I would buy that in a heartbeat! Thanks for the video!👍
Ralph lost the instructions to the suit *TWICE... That time he learned how to shrink himself then put the 2nd book down "on a boulder" aka a grain of sand then grew back to normal size. RIP. Poor guy couldnt win.
Yeah he was very clumsy
How could you not include that iconic Stephen J. Cannell production company teaser?!
“Believe it or not
I’m walking awound
I nevew thought I could
Twick or twe-he-heat!”
Yes, my introduction to this show was, in fact, a Homestar Runner Halloween episode. (I saw the Seinfeld reference before that, but as a young kid who had never seen the original show, I thought George was just leaving a weird answering machine message.)
Love the "Play it backwards" Satanic reference! OMG... That was so fuckin' 80's, too!
From what I remember he was like the clumsy Superman 🦸♂️ .... lol as a kid I enjoyed the hell out of this show!
"Ralph's uniform grants him the powers of flight, super strength, invulnerability, invisibility, precognition, telekinesis, X-ray vision, super speed, pyrokinesis, shrinking, psychometry ("holographic vision"), and even the ability to detect the supernatural" = Can't find the instructions to the suit
In case anyone was wondering, yes that was Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen, yes they were some sort of detectives, and no Goldblum was the one playing 'Brownshoe'.
Why do I remember this stuff?
Sexy Jeff Goldblum! His jurassic park scene made him unforgettable. Lol
We didn't have cable when I was a kid and couldn't pick up this channel so I've always held a bit of a grudge against this show because all my friends talked about it and I didn't get the references.
I was a little young for this one, but a show I loved in a similar vein was My Secret Identity.
Gotta say I loved GAH when I was a kid...he just wasnt like other Super Heroes...it was such a great twist he lost the instruction book and couldnt remember how to fly
This, A-Team and Knight Rider were my live-action trifecta growing up. Also, almost every time I hear Ryan Reynolds, I picture Robert Culp's character. He'd be great in a reboot, if the production could afford him.
I got a Mint Mobile ad in the middle of the video and it made me realize the same thing.
Don't forget airwolf and street hawk (Granted that one was pretty much third tier, but I still liked it lol)
@@blackc1479 remember Automan and Manimal? 😁
@@theshadow2171 lol yeah, I liked em both but they couldn't stand up w the heavy hitters.....though I did always want my own personal cursor.
They might have trouble keeping Reynolds out of the costume.
TGAH should team up with Condorman and create their own multiverse of superheroes and villains that always seemed to miss the mark.
I still remember the episode scene where he loses the 2nd book of instructions. Learns that he can shrink. Does it. Puts the book down. Then gets scared by an ant and unshrinks leaving the book.
The instant Ralph set book2 down, I knew that was the end of it!
I was always soooo frustrated by that scene. The aliens in a later episode told him there are no more spare instruction books! Sucks for the next person to inherit the suit.
I always thought the book should've had a homing device.
@@rolandbujeiro42 That episode: "The Greatest American Heroine," the NBC pilot.
My head canon was always that there's a hypnotic suggestion built into the suit which forces the user to lose the instructions. The aliens want the recipient to grow into the power the suit offers by forcing them to learn how to use it the hard way, and so that they can't simply blame the aliens and absolve themselves of responsibility, the suit will always make the wearer somehow lose the book themselves.
I always wanted to watch this as a kid. I didn’t realize it ended when it did, which was right around when I was more conscious of the non-cartoon shows I was watching. Will always like the theme song. Good stuff!
I think in 1983 I got really into shows like Hardcastle & McCormack, Airwolf, and Simon & Simon.
As someone who missed a lot of these the first time as I was born in 80 so many of these series are still so iconic all these years later.
It feels so different and special compared to stuff now. They really tried to be a fun show with action but not so much violence. Very different then what we have these days for better or worse.
I loved this show as a kid and still enjoy it today. Partially for the intended jokes and partially due to how horrendously dated the show is. I still think an updated version of the show made for todays age would work wonders, especially with the main character having to dodge cell phones to protect their secret identity, or better to give them a ridiculous cap to go with the super suit so they can feel even worse wearing it. There is just something timeless and entertaining about a super hero with every power they could think of, but no clue how to effectively use any of them
The responsibility of unintended and unearned power was a big theme on US television in the 70s and 80s, including shows like Shazam/Isis and even Knight Rider, where KITT is put into the hands of a cop who has no idea what the car can do. I think it was the result of social upheaval in the 60s around civil rights, rising corporate power, and the Viet Nam war, where the idea of American exceptionalism was started to fade and people were thinking about the responsibilities of being the 800 pound gorilla on the world stage.
Sadly, the rise of Fox News and the evangelical right crushed this nascent moral growth as a seedling, and we're right back in the 1950s today.
I really like the concept of this show and I get the whole "lost the instructions" angle, but after the 20th time Ralph crash landed into something and gave no indication that he was going to improve simply by doing, the novelty wore off for me.
That theme song, though, is absolutely BANGIN'!
There was an episode where the aliens return and give him another instruction book and he almost immediately loses that one too. That was enough for me.
It would have been so cool if we saw a learning progression over time!
Had a hoodie made with the symbol......this was my superman when the super friends weren't on.....and yes.....the theme song STILL SLAPS!!!!!
I watched this show as a kid, I watched it on FX when it aired weekends on the Triple Action TV block with Wonder Woman and Green Hornet in the 1990s, and I still watch it on ME TV today.
Oh yeah ME TV, I knew somebody was still showing this and The A-Team and pretty much any other iconic show from the 80s.
Sometimes I wonder if shows with truly great theme songs make us love them because of the song, but I'd like to believe it's because the songs masterfully capture the spirit of the show. Greatest American Hero, Golden Girls, Family Ties and Growing Pains have theme songs that never get old.
Sci-Fi for many was ABC's TGAH, Automan & Starman.
In 1982 , I was watching “Superman ll”.😮 And Superman was too busy. He had to………“Save the President!!!!”😂😂😂😂.He was a “Bad Dude”, dude!😂😂😂😂
We need the Greatest American Hero TODAY!
This was a favorite of mine. I can still hear Michael Pare calling William Katt "Mr. H." That must have been during the not-Hinckley episodes.
I think the concept for Greatest American Hero would work today too! I would like to see this get the silver screen treatment!
William Katt did an episode of the Nickelodeon series The Thundermans (sitcom about a superhero family) playing the grandfather, "Sergeant Thunder", but he does say at one point that he was "the greatest American hero". 🤣
The main reason I thought about The Greatest American Hero was because the kick-off for the Arrowverse's Crisis on Earth-X event had William Katt play the minister at the Flash's wedding, that proceeded to get crashed by another dimension.
And you know what, being the first person to die in a big crossover event isn't too shabby.
As someone who's learning Japanese and therefore recognized the center kanji I was desperately hoping you'd address that. Thank you for doing so!
Just rewatched the whole series a couple months ago, love it
I'd compare it more to shazam than superman.
Especially after the recent movie, "I don't even know how to pee in this thing!".
Nice! I loved The Greatest American Hero, its one of Stephen J. Cannell’s and Frank Lupo’s best created TV series. And the theme song, Believe It Or Not remains a fave.
My fave character on the show wasn’t Ralph Hinkley, but Robert Culp’s FBI agent Bill Maxwell, who even got mentioned in Marvel Comics’ The A-Team #1 (“Diamonds Are a Thief’s Best Friend”).
13:55 "...as Disney suggested it was too off-brand for them" cut to 2022 and Ms. Marvel
Amazing timing! I’ll hopefully be meeting William Kat at a convention on Saturday!
"Part Green Lantern, part Welcome Back Kotter." That's the stuff I watch for. 😏👍
I can't believe you were able to mention Stephen J. Cannell Productions without including or referencing their iconic logo sequence.
Ill day it again, a shared universe with Greatest American hero, Manimal, Misfits of science, knight rider, automan, and others!
Also
You gotta cover "My secret identity"!
Nice. My choice for shared universe is Manimal, Phoenix, Bigfoot & Wild Boy, The Man from Atlantis, and AutoMan.
I loved that show as a kid in the 80’s. The theme song was so catchy and Connie such a honey. Funny a super suit from space has a user manual and the symbol on the suit is a Chinese character.
I really liked this show. And I met William Katt a few years ago and he’s a really nice guy !!!
Or maybe people are starting to realize that not everything with an 80s production date on it is worth milking 30 plus years after the fact. Some things are okay left as classics ya know, ever wonder why there is no reboot of Gone with the Wind or Citizen Kane?
Never say never! Chances are, there might be some idiot out there in Hollywood trying to reboot those classic films.
I shudder at the very thought of it!
LOVED THE SHOW! ALSO LOVED THE SONG! I need to add that something happened to me back in 2019 After my first year in new job whose field Id been doing 15+ years. The new GM gave me a wooden plaque saying "Employee of the year". Which In had DIFFICULTY accepting. See I had been abused majority of my life. I then took a photo of the plaque and added song to it as a video. "The initial lyrics of Believe it or Not". I felt unworthy of the plaque. I know how the character Ralph felt at being a superhero. "It should have been somebody else"
I'm sure you were worthy of every square millimeter of that plaque, the work that went into making it, and so much more. Those people that told you different most of your life? They were wrong.
Stay safe out there, 'k? 🙏
The amount of this video that was devoted to the song makes me happier than I can communicate in a TH-cam comment
I was expecting that Seinfeld reference and he did not disappoint.
I loved that show as a kid. Poor Connie Sellica kept getting put in series that never lasted. That perm on Katt though. Yikes.
I love this show, even with its multiple, massive faults. Besides all the enjoyment I had of this as a child, I picked up the box set as soon as it came out and showed my kids. The pilot was far cheesier than I recalled, with visible green screen and a "stone" wall that bounced when he hit it. My kids laughed at how bad it was and I did right along with them.
Probably different experience watching on a 19 inch tube tv.
Oh man, Culp's read in that TV commercial sounded vaguely threatening. LOL. I loved this show.
I hope DC or Warner buy this character and became a good friend of Shazam.
My dad absolutely LOVED this show, while I was so put off by it because it made literally no sense to my 4 year old mind.
Please...DO NOT REBOOT.
My first cat was named Ralph... named by by brother after this exact hero.
If they remade it today, it would likely star Zendaya or some other "diverse" person, and have a goofy white bloke sidekick.
At the time Robert Culp's portrayal of Bill Maxwell cemented in my young impressionable mind the template of what an FBI agent looked, acted, and sounded like for many years. A testament to Culp's screen presence and acting abilities.
I always remember this as the show where I learned the word "scenario" as a kid.
My parents would give me quarters to pick songs in the jukebox. The patrons must have hated me, because the only song I'd pick was the theme song to the greatest American hero.
The good old days :)
Believe it or not, George isn’t at home…
Used to love this as a kid. The alien's spaceship was pretty impressive. Even today I remember it looking pretty good.
I greatly enjoyed William Katt's acting work in
later films such as LAST CALL ( 1990 ) and NAKED OBSESSION ( 1991 ).
I'm not sure how the The Greatest American Hero could be done in the modern world for the simple fact of all the damn cameras we have EVERYWHERE. Security cameras, ring cameras, everyone has a smartphone. Ralph was a unique superhero, he didn't have a public superhero persona, no one in the show called him "the greatest American hero", well except for that weirdo reboot pilot that turned into the series finale, GAHeroine. If anyone saw Ralph in the suit, they assumed he was some kind of flake, a nutjob. So how could we do the show today with so many cameras, proving a guy can fly and do other superhuman feats? Plus today, cosplay, especially superhero cosplay is far more accepted than it was in the 80s. People aren't going to assume you are a nutjob if you run around in a cape today, they will think you are going to comic con event, a costume party, etc, etc. The big option is to bring the show bag and reformat it with Ralph having a public persona like a typical Marvel or DC hero, have him still lose the instruction book, but be a public superhero that doesn't know what he's doing. Much like a lighthearted like Shazaam! movie. But, basically you lose the charm and uniqueness of the original series if you give Ralph a public superhero personality. I'm really stumped on this one. But then again, it is a show now over 40 years old, so if you're going to go against the original premise, who cares at this point. The 2000s was really the decade to bring back the show, in 2004 if a Hero movie was done altering the premise I would have been furious, but now in the 2020s it's a 40 year old show, at this point it's like....do whatever. Who cares at this point. Or just don't bring it back.
Still one of my favorite 80s series and my favorite superhero show of all time. Love the song, the character interactions, and especially some of the more science-fictiony or supernatural episodes--when the aliens came back to heal Ralph when he got shot; the War Games-like episode (sadly, the DVD release had to replace "Eve of Destruction" with another song that simply doesn't fit the action sequence); that time Bill was possessed by a ghost. Sure, the special fx weren't the greatest, but honestly that's part of its charm. I was always disappointed that The X-Files never did a nod to the show with an episode or just a cameo with Bill & Ralph...
Toy Galaxy just gave me a top ten worthy, weirdest life moment…. I woke from a nap, popped in my earbuds and watched this video. Enjoyed it immensely. I spend a minute or two to continue waking up, and I get up and go out to the living room, where my girlfriend is watching Seinfeld. No sooner than I realize what she’s watching, I hear the song. It was the same moment from this video! My brain immediately had a segmentation fault and core dumped.
I adored this show. I was 3 in '81, but I still understood what was going on. Watching it in syndication years later, I think the death knell of the series was when Ralph had to fight a sea monster. That's when it lost its "down to Earth" tone.
The resemblance to the hanzi for "center" (or "medium"--it also appears in the word for "China") is something I wondered about for a while--sounds like it wasn't intentional.
I liked this show when I watched it as a kid, loved the mix of humor and superheroics.
I love this channel! It is a constant reminder of how lucky I was to be an 80s kid. :)
I had the pilot movie on VHS and watched it repeatedly in my lower teens. Favorite episodes were "Beast in Black" and "Spoil Sport" with Sterling Hayden playing another obsessed USAF general.
Still my favorite 80's live action show. I really wish he could make a comeback
Nah we saw what they want to do with it same thing that's happening with the MCU and everything else marvel. If it ain't diverse and or woman it ain't getting made.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu they most likely have a lesbian female recast
@@robd1329
So more like batwoman then, yeah that sounds just as likely.
I gotta admit--I wasn't a huge fan. While the whole premise that Ralph lost the instruction book and has to figure out the suit as he goes sounds good, he spent way too long figuring it out. By about half-way through the first season, the botched landings became less funny and more of an eye-roll. I mean, really, you can't go away for a few weekends and figure this out?
That said, I was amused by the reboot you mention @ 13:20. Does it sound a little like something from MARVEL that is soon to grace our Disney+ subscriptions?
Loved it as a kid, but it's pretty much standard issue Cannell. For all that The Rockford Files deserves its place in the TV pantheon, it worked because of James Garner and not because of its attempts to subvert detective shows. And William Katt is no James Garner. Plus we need to admit that people who like superheroes still like to see them be super if when the stories are subverted. The "I don't know what I am doing!" stuff gets old.
I remember reading about a movie adaptation effort in the early 2000s that would feature Owen Wilson as the titular befuddled superhero. I hit Google and couldn't find much in a cursory search - just an article saying that the producers had decided to go with an "unknown" instead of Wilson.
I would've liked to have seen a reboot or movie of this in the early 2000s, but God, PLEASE don't let them decide to do it now. They would turn it into a Woke piece of crap not even remotely worth watching.
I kinda miss when "superhero deconstruction" was this and not "what if Superman was an absolute monster" over & over & over & over like we have now. In fact, I'd say that maybe the world is too cynical for a Greatest American Hero revival, since at the end of the day, Ralph was still a good person doing good things, and people don't want that in their superhero deconstructions.
The charm of the first series was the characters and the actors, regardless of any behind-the-scenes drama. People didn't watch because of the basic premise, that he got a supersuit from aliens, and I think that's why reboots don't work. The humor and actors, particularly Robert Culp, is what made that show work, not the IP.
I do recall seeing teh show back in the day here in the UK... I think the BBC used to show it for a while... It was fun!
It is one of those shows that I feel could get a proper reboot that could work... Even just recalling it, I have already come up with some ideas that could work and make it a really compelling show... It could be really good!
My Greatest American Hero moment was being sick as a kid. I was up late and the only thing on TV was a program guide for one channel, the rest were off the air. In the corner of the guide they looped the intro to the Greatest American hero over and over and over. It burned into my mind..
If you are looking a forgotten super hero movie that subverts all of the super hero tropes... The Specials is that film. It got overlooked because Mystery Men failed so hard this movie went direct to DVD. A great comedy well worth the watch if you like the subverted hero trope.
OK, I will now be forever sad that we didn't get a Lord & Miller remake of Greatest American Hero. That could have been amazing.
Actually no part Green Lantern. What's this guy talking about? Ralph didn't have a ring, he had a suit Hal Jordan was a pilot, Ralph is a high school teacher. Already, in less than 2:30 mins, this guy is getting data wrong.
Man, I used to love this show also, I must have been around 10 or 11. I was pissed when it got canceled. The only thing that used to really piss me of is Ralph Hinkleys GAH character was always soooo close to either figuring out the suit but never quite got it or they had an episode, if I remember correctly it was 40 years ago, they aired an episode where the aliens came back to give him a second set of instructions, and dude screwed it up again. It was the old carrot on the stick routine. Made my blood boil.
this show is one of many older shows that are recognizable
other Older shows from the 80s included:
the a team
hill street blues
Macgyver (which i think you should do a video on next)
remmington steele
hunter
sitcoms like cheers and Night court
cartoons like ducktales
and many others
the reason for the viewer suggestion for a History of Macgyver video
is because it might need to be a slightly longer than the Normal 15 min video Like a 30 to 60 min one
to best explain about the origins of the characters and how they came to how viewers like them
as well as a explain of all of the 7 seasons and the 2 tv movies of the original 85 macgyver series,
and the positive culture impact it has on viewers even after it went to syndication home video and streaming
If they make him a woman I wouldn't watch it anyway.
I LOVED THIS SHOW. Wish it could come back… maybe in modern time (now) with his grandson finding the suit in the attic.
This was my favorite show when I was a little boy. When it would come on I would take this little bit I had and would put it on backwards like a cape. Then my parents wod pick me up and fly me around while the theme song played. We would all sing a long with it and at the end they would sing "believe it or not, it's Larry" (that's my real name) and then they would "crash" me into the sofa because Ralph could never land either. Honestly, it's one of my favorite memories!
It failed because the show sucked. Something about a bumbling superhero doesn’t inspire much confidence that we’ll be ok.
This show had straight up the OLDEST looking high school kids in tv history..The Golden Girls would of looked younger