The Best Episodes of Starsky & Hutch
Every episode of Starsky & Hutch ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Starsky & Hutch!
Streetwise Detective David Starsky partners up with a more intellectual partner, Kenneth 'Hutch' Hutchinson, to protect citizens and patrol the streets of Bay City.
Top Episode Ratings Summary
The best episode of "Starsky & Hutch" is "The Set-Up (1)", rated 8.1/10 from 273 user votes. It was directed by George McCowan and written by N/A. "The Set-Up (1)" aired on 1/22/1977 and is rated 0.0 point(s) higher than the second highest rated, "Starsky's Lady (a.k.a. Revenge; a.k.a. Snowball)".
8.1/10 273 votes#1 - The Set-Up (1)
Season 2 Episode 16 - Aired 1/22/1977
First episode of a two-part story. The tough Detective partners are working incognito as truckers, in an operation to safely transport Joe Durniak - a man with Mob connections who Starsky knows from his childhood - who is promised protection and a new identity in return for giving testimony as a key state witness. But when Durniak is shot dead by a lone gunman convinced that Durniak was behind the murder of his wife, Starsky and Hutch find themselves uncovering a complex plot of bizarre deception. But as they investigate, they themselves come under suspicion for being involved with Durniak's murder...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
8.1/10 264 votes#2 - Starsky's Lady (a.k.a. Revenge; a.k.a. Snowball)
Season 2 Episode 19 - Aired 2/12/1977
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...
Director: Georg Stanford Brown
Writer: N/A
8.0/10 314 votes#3 - Bounty Hunter
Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 4/21/1976
When a Cop is shot dead, apparently by a bail-jumper, the Detective duo pursue the alleged murderer. But as Starsky and Hutch search for the felon, they find that they are not the only ones after the felon – an extortionist bail-bondsman and her accomplice are also on his trail...
Director: Don Weis, George McCowan
Writer: N/A
8.0/10 270 votes#4 - The Set-Up (2)
Season 2 Episode 17 - Aired 1/29/1977
Conclusion of this two-part story. The duo try to uncover the truth behind Terry Nash - the well-intentioned gun-man out to avenge the murder of his wife and who, until recently, didn't seem to even exist - but in doing so, they are framed and wind up suspended from duty and becoming fugitives. Determined to unlock the secrets about Terry and to clear their names, the twisted trail of their investigations leads to a complex operation in which innocent victims are brain-washed into murdering those that they believe to be their enemies. But with the investigations getting too close to home, the masterminds behind the brain-washing set-up have new murder victims in their sights - Starsky and Hutch...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
8.0/10 256 votes#5 - Starsky and Hutch Are Guilty
Season 2 Episode 25 - Aired 4/16/1977
When a Police informant is brutally beaten, witnesses point the finger at Starsky and Hutch. As the vicious assaults continue, the Detective partners are dropped increasingly deeper in hot water as they realise they are being framed. Unbeknown to them, they're being impersonated by two look-alike impostors out to get the genuine pair a bad name and Police suspension...
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.0/10 220 votes#6 - Class in Crime
Season 3 Episode 18 - Aired 2/15/1978
Investigating a series of immaculately executed murders, the case leads Hutch back to school as a college student, to get the low-down on a brilliant college professor who teaches a senior student course on the ""philosophy of crime"" and specialises in murder...
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Writer: Don Rene Patterson
8.0/10 232 votes#7 - Deckwatch
Season 3 Episode 23 - Aired 5/17/1978
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...
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Writer: N/A
7.9/10 274 votes#8 - Nightmare
Season 2 Episode 11 - Aired 11/28/1976
A gang of rapists who attacked a 19-year-old girl may go free because an ambitious district attorney thinks that the victim's testimony may be worthless in court.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.9/10 250 votes#9 - The Committee
Season 2 Episode 21 - Aired 2/26/1977
After the streetwise Detectives capture a rapist, they are outraged when the thug is let of with a lenient court sentence. Starsky openly vents his disgust at such light punishment - attracting the interests of a vigilante Police 'death squad', who are executing criminals that are given such lenient sentences, and see him as their next possible recruit...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
7.9/10 272 votes#10 - Starsky & Hutch on Playboy Island (a.k.a. Murder on Voodoo Island) (2)
Season 3 Episode 2 - Aired 9/17/1977
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...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
7.9/10 234 votes#11 - Sweet Revenge
Season 4 Episode 22 - Aired 5/15/1979
As Starsky lies in a hospital bed at death's door, Hutch goes after the powerful man who tried to have him killed
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
Writer: N/A
7.8/10 377 votes#12 - Death Notice
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 10/15/1975
When a message is left scrawled on a table cloth in a strip club that one of the strippers will be killed, Starsky and Hutch are called in to protect the dancing girls and find the strange man who was sitting at the table. The hunt for the man intensifies as the stripper who was threatened is murdered, and another warned in a message that she is next; but a surprise twist means that the duo may not be looking for the right man...
Director: William Crain
Writer: N/A
7.8/10 319 votes#13 - Kill Huggy Bear
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 10/29/1975
Big pimping confidant Huggy Bear is marked for death after being robbed of a fortune owed to a ruthless racketeer. Starsky and Hutch must locate the stolen loot before their friend winds up murdered by the mob.
Director: Michael Schultz
Writer: N/A
7.8/10 322 votes#14 - The Hostages
Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 1/7/1976
When Starsky offers for himself and Hutch to check on a waitress's missing friend, they find the man dead, leading them to stumble across a plot to rob an armoured car by a gang that are holding the driver's pregnant wife hostage, forcing the driver to go along with the plan...
Director: George McCowan, Fernando Lamas
Writer: N/A
7.8/10 259 votes#15 - The Specialist
Season 2 Episode 8 - Aired 11/6/1976
Starsky, Hutch, and two other Officers respond to an armed robbery on a jewellers, only for a woman to accidentally get shot dead from the gun-fire from one of the lawmen. The dead woman's husband is a Special Agent, paranoid after being retired from the service, and convinced that the Officers were really hit-men after him, and sets about extracting his revenge on each of the Cops involved in the death of his wife.With the man an expert in specialist weapons, Starsky and Hutch must stop the deranged Agent before he uses his expertise training to wipe them out...
Director: Fernando Lamas
Writer: N/A
7.8/10 261 votes#16 - Murder Ward
Season 3 Episode 5 - Aired 10/8/1977
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...
Director: Earl Bellamy
Writer: Anthony Yerkovich
7.8/10 238 votes#17 - The Heroes
Season 3 Episode 8 - Aired 10/29/1977
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...
Director: Georg Stanford Brown
Writer: N/A
7.8/10 230 votes#18 - The Plague (1)
Season 3 Episode 9 - Aired 11/19/1977
First episode of a two-part story. Starsky and Hutch collect a colleague from the airport, but soon after the man is struck down by a deadly disease caught from a passenger on the same flight. The streetwise Detectives must spring into action to find the carrier - an international assassin planning to make a hit on a major syndicate chief - as the entire city becomes threatened with the spreading, lethal virus...
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.7/10 306 votes#19 - Losing Streak
Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 1/14/1976
Down-on-his-luck jazz pianist Vic Rankin steals some money owed to him from a former boss, unaware that the cash is actually counterfeit. In over his head, Vic finds himself a hunted man and goes on the run, as his former boss, connected to the Mob, sends his heavies out to retrieve the money and wipe out the man who dare steal it. The race is on for Starsky and Hutch to find Vic before the Mob get to him...
Director: Don Weis, George McCowan
Writer: Edward J. Lakso
7.7/10 299 votes#20 - The Las Vegas Strangler (1)
Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 9/25/1976
First part of a feature-length / two-part story. Dare-devil Detective duo Starsky and Hutch are loaned to the Las Vegas Police Department to snare a serial killer that has strangled a string of chorus girls. But the pair don't realise that they've been chosen for the case on more than merit alone - the prime suspect is an old high-school friend of Hutch's. While tracking down the killer, Starsky starts seeing an attractive show-girl - who could be the killer's next victim...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
7.7/10 252 votes#21 - The Las Vegas Strangler (2)
Season 2 Episode 2 - Aired 9/25/1976
Concluding part of this feature-length / two-part story. The duo close in on the serial strangler who is singling out chorus girls, but the investigation holds some unexpected, startling implications about several people linked to the case...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
7.7/10 284 votes#22 - Gillian
Season 2 Episode 5 - Aired 10/16/1976
The Detective duo investigate a killing that is latest in a string of crimes in the red-light district. Off duty, Hutch is getting serious with his new girl-friend, the classy Gillian, but as the intreptid Detectives investigate the killing, Starsky by chance finds that Hutch's new love is a prostitute, who wants out but is being forced to continue by a cunning pimp and his mother. Starsky knows that his unwitting discovery could destroy his partnership with Hutch...
Director: George McCowan
Writer: N/A
7.7/10 280 votes#23 - The Psychic
Season 2 Episode 15 - Aired 1/15/1977
Huggy introduces the Detective duo to a friend of his, opening up a new café, 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...
Director: Don Weis
Writer: Michael Mann
7.7/10 244 votes#24 - Death in a Different Place
Season 3 Episode 6 - Aired 10/15/1977
The intreptid 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?...
Director: Sutton Roley
Writer: N/A
7.7/10 222 votes#25 - The Collector
Season 3 Episode 11 - Aired 12/3/1977
A calculating criminal bumps off a loan-shark's collector and takes over the role, collecting debts for the head of the money-loaning racket – a washed-up former child star. The Detective pals investigate, only for it to turn out that the father of Hutch's girl-friend is one of the people owing money to the crooked racket, and that the vicious new collector is actually a notorious killer with an ulterior motive...
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A