The Greatest American Hero

Jun 29, 2026

DVD Documentary about the show.

Jun 29, 2026

This was a pilot for a spin-off series that was never aired on network television. Three years after the end of the show, Ralph is exposed with the suit and allows all the attention to inflate his ego. The greenguys return and tell him to find someone else to take over the use of the suit.

Jun 29, 2026

Jun 29, 2026

Jun 29, 2026

Jun 29, 2026

Jun 29, 2026

Jun 29, 2026

Stephen J Cannell, creator and producer of The Greatest American Hero, talks about his life, some of influences on his writing and how is career in television developed.

Jun 29, 2026

Mike Post, a prolific television and film composer, and the composer of the theme music for The Greatest American Hero talks about his career as a composer.

Jun 29, 2026

Mar 18, 1981

Ralph Hinkley, an average school teacher, is given a suit with amazing powers by aliens. Now, Ralph must decide if he'll use his new powers to fight crime, even though he already lost the suit's instruction manual.

Mar 25, 1981

Bill, who has been trying to bust open a drug ring for over 20 years, must drive a witness to Los Angeles for the trial of the gang leader and asks Ralph for help.

Apr 01, 1981

When a secret gunsight is stolen, Bill asks Ralph for help in solving the case. However, Ralph runs into problems when he keeps turning invisible unexpectedly, and must deal with the pressure of meeting Pam's parents.

Apr 08, 1981

Russians are trying to find an heiress and her Russian husband in order to force them to establish a missile cache hold on their private island. Bill needs Ralph's help when he is suspected of failing a lie-detector test at FBI headquarters.

Apr 15, 1981

Ralph uses his suit to help Rhonda, one of his students, after her mother is kidnapped by the Russians.

Apr 29, 1981

Ralph reconsiders his suit of powers after a flying mistake almost takes out a bus full of tourists. Bill also reconsiders his job path when one of his heroes is suspected of plotting out the theft of a precious diamond.

May 06, 1981

Ralph lends Tony a hand by finding him a job as a car repossesser. When Tony is arrested for arson, Ralph and Bill team up to find the real criminal.

May 13, 1981

At FBI headquarters, promotions are being handed out. However, Bill considers retiring from his job. Meanwhile, Ralph must use his suit to save Pam when she discovers her boss is the head of an underground operation.

Nov 04, 1981

Ralph dons a baseball suit to trap Latino revolutionaries who plan to finance a coup by fixing ball games.

Nov 11, 1981

Ralph and Bill must stop World War III by defusing a corrupt military leader's plans to launch a suprise missile attack against Russia.

Nov 18, 1981

Ralph and Bill are kidnapped by a tycoon that actually had his own suit given to him years ago by the aliens. The suit corrupted this man to use it for personal fortune, and he did not lose the instruction book. The aliens did not like the way he was using the suit, and they took it away from him.

Nov 25, 1981

A motorcycle gang steals the super-suit, and tries to use it to take over a town. It only works on Ralph, so they must force HIM to do their dirty work while holding Bill captive.

Dec 02, 1981

Ralph's students start a band, and a promoter lands them a spot on a big ticket concert while trying to get Pam to go out with him.

Dec 09, 1981

Ralph finds a window into the 4th dimension while scouting an old house. Bill gets possesed by a woman's spirit, and Ralph must return her through that window.

Dec 16, 1981

Bill has a treasure map, and takes Ralph and his class out to the desert to find the lost Diablo Gold Mine that vanished a long time ago, and are met with resistance from the local thieves.

Jan 06, 1982

A psycho military cult leader tries to spread the small-pox virus.

Jan 13, 1982

Ralph crashes head first into a train, and gets amnesia. Pam and Bill have to convince him that the suit really works.

Jan 20, 1982

While practicing flying in the desert with Bill, Ralph gets a vision of a plane crash. It's the suit showing it to him, and Bill can only see it when he touches Ralph. They rush to the scene to find no plane, and figure out that it must be something that hasn't happened yet, and they're supposed to prevent it. We come to find out that Pam is on that plane, and it's been hijacked. To make matters worse, the plane has an experimental cloaking device that makes it invisible to radar, and the Air Force would rather shoot it down than have the plane in enemy hands.

Jan 27, 1982

Years ago, prisoners of war were brainwashed to respond to a code phrase. Now, someone is using them to commit acts of sabotage. Bill and Ralph investigate, but Bill inadvertently falls under a hypnotic trance, leaving the heroics up to Ralph.

Feb 03, 1982

Ralph takes a job at the circus as a human cannonball while trying to help Bill bust a crime ring that involves a phony dating service.

Feb 10, 1982

A space shuttle is about to crash, and only Ralph can save it. He does so, but ends up supermagnetized, perhaps permanently. Worst of all, a strange creature aboard the shuttle heads towards Los Angeles, electricuting all who get in its way.

Feb 17, 1982

Ron O'Neill, John Hancock, Thalmus Rasulala, Lincoln Kilpatrick Scenario: When an old FBI buddy invites Bill to his Caribbean retreat, Maxwell takes Ralph, Pam and the students along. Unfortunately, they find themselves involved in a voodoo plot to take over the island's government.

Feb 24, 1982

Ralph and Bill hunt for the sea creature ""Carrie"" in the Bermuda Triangle thinking that the monster may be responsible for all of the boats that disappear there. They undercover a stolen boat ring, and never find the creature.

Mar 03, 1982

Ralph skis like a pro with the suit on, and stands in at the Olympics for a Russian skiier so the man can defect to America, and hand over top secret information that he stole.

Mar 17, 1982

An act of kindness backfires when Ralph uses the suit to help a coworker with a personal project. This leads his other co-workers to take daring chances for their own shots at success. Soon, he must don the super suit not only to prevent them from ruining their lives, but also to save Bill from a vengeful, recently paroled killer.

Mar 24, 1982

Bill convinces the parents of a kidnap victim to pay the ransom, certain that Ralph can recover it when he saves their little girl. Ralph finds himself being audited by an overzealous IRS agent who's convinced he took the ransom money. Meanwhile, Ralph and Bill keep getting shot at in drive-by shootings, but by who?

Mar 31, 1982

Tired of using the suit to fight crime, Ralph decides to branch out. He tries to intervene in a battle between an old man fighting for his home and the city taking it away, but Bill has him on the hunt for bank robbers.

Apr 07, 1982

Bill recieves hot tips on a speed factory working out of a fast food chain, and a newspaper reporter publishes pictures of Ralph flying.

Apr 14, 1982

Ralph's mother is re-marrying to a man who planted a much wanted micro-chip in her engagement ring.

Apr 28, 1982

Bill falls in love with a female FBI agent, and wants to tell her about the suit. She turns out to be a spy, and is ordered to kill him.

Oct 29, 1982

After a loud argument with Bill, Ralph quits the hero business and turns in his super-suit. Unknown to both men, a gang of neo-Nazis plans to murder them.

Nov 05, 1982

While attending a high-school reunion, Ralph discovers that the wife of a famous pro football player is held hostage to ensure her husband will throw the big game.

Nov 12, 1982

With their relationship in trouble, Ralph convinces Pam to go on a vacation without Bill or his suit. Unfortunately Bill shows up unannounced with his suit and trouble ensues.

Nov 19, 1982

A magician killed performing his greatest trick seemingly returns from the grave to murder his three rivals. Ralph must use his suit to out trick the would-be killer.

Jan 06, 1983

Ralph and Pam's wedding is almost ruined when Ralph receives special orders from the President to fly a mission over the North Pole. Bill discovers the orders were faked, and that Ralph has accidentally given the Russians valuable military secrets.

Jan 13, 1983

A former Nazi genetic engineer fakes Bill's death to use him in an experiment, but Ralph realizes his friend is still alive. He flies off to rescue Bill and the evil doctor's other victims, but a genetic horror created in an earlier experiment waits to battle him.

Jan 20, 1983

An Aging TV anchorman plans to retire in grand style. He hires a band of mercenaries to sabotage a nuclear plant, hoping that his coverage of the event can launch a Presidential campaign. Ralph must stop the plant from exploding, but the saboteurs, now dying of radiation poisoning, are determined to succeed.

Jan 27, 1983

One of Ralph's students invents a radio telescope capable of decoding Russian satellite messages. The KGB tries to steal his system. When that maneuver fails, they decide to kill him before he can share his discovery with the CIA.

Feb 03, 1983

A young Chinese scientist has invented a deadly particle "ray gun" weapon. A local gang kidnaps his uncle, hoping to obtain the gun. Bill's plan to save the Uncle backfires, and Ralph must test his suit against the deadly ray.

Feb 10, 1983

King Abu Al-Fahad asks Ralph and Bill to help find his son, Prince Aha, who was kidnapped by Middle Eastern terrorists while playing a Dungeons and Dragonsesque game, Wizards and Warlocks. Their search leads them from Aha's college campus -- where they meet Aha's Keeper of the Clock, Joey Margolis -- to the game's author himself, Norman Fackler.

Feb 17, 1983

Bill is called by the manager of a rock group that is aboard a plane threatened by a bomber, who has hidden a device set to explode if the plane descends below 1000 feet. Ralph flies into action, but matters escalate when Pam is kidnapped and a band of bikers threaten Bill's life.

Feb 24, 1983

A weekend in the country leads Ralph, Pam and Bill into a race to save a wild stallion from a cruel rancher. The man blames the horse for a crippling injury. His men are also selling horses for use as dog food.

Mar 03, 1983

It seems that 30 years ago Bill helped some revolutionaries overthrow a corrupt regime in an unnamed Central American country, where he is now regarded as a hero. But now Bill's old revolutionary compadres have turned up, and they soon kidnap him and try to get him to help lead another revolution.