THE GREEN HORNET MARATHON
Decades, 8:00 p.m. ET
Here’s a real TV rarity: Tonight on DECADES, the ABC 1966-67 camp fantasy series The Green Hornet, presented as a spinoff of sorts from the contemporaneous, equally camp Batman, is shown in its entirety, in one long 26-episode marathon, beginning at 8 p.m. ET. Van Williams stars as the masked crimefighter – by day, a well-to-do newspaper publisher named Britt Reid – but the big draw here is Reid’s valet and chauffeur, Kato, a kung fu expert who also serves as the Green Hornet’s sidekicking sidekick. He’s played by the great Bruce Lee – as referenced in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. If you’re diving into The Green Hornet for the first time, watch the premiere episode at 8 p.m. ET, then try to make sure to catch 1966’s “The Frog Is a Deadly Weapon” episode (at 10 p.m. ET) and 1967’s “Corpse of the Year” (2:30 a.m. ET). Both of those episodes feature Barbara Babcock, whom you may recall as the sensual Grace Gardner on NBC’s Hill Street Blues. Or, perhaps, in a pivotal NBC Star Trek episode aired the season after The Green Hornet: the seminal 1968 “Plato’s Stepchildren” episode, featuring TV’s first interracial kiss (between William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura).