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Magnum, P.I. (1980)
7.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Tom Selleck plays a former Navy SEAL turned private investigator who lives in the guesthouse of a Hawaiian estate, with free use of a Ferrari 308 GTS and a caretaker, John Hillerman's Higgins, who disapproves of all of it. It is a detective show on paper, but the Oahu scenery, T.C.'s charter helicopter and Magnum's wry narration make it play as adventure.
Eight seasons means some thin cases and filler. Start with "Did You See the Sunrise?", the two-part season 3 opener from 1982, in which the officer who held Magnum and T.C. in a Vietnamese prison camp comes hunting them. Its ending is the darkest turn the series ever takes.
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The Greatest American Hero (1981)
7.3/10on IMDb
First aired
A high school teacher is handed a superhero suit by aliens and promptly loses the instruction book, so he has to learn its powers by trial and error, and nearly every flight is a crash waiting to happen. William Katt plays Ralph Hinkley as a decent guy out of his depth, and Robert Culp steals scenes as Bill Maxwell, the gruff FBI agent who wants to aim the suit at bad guys.
The effects are cheap, which is half the joke, and three seasons stop it from wearing thin. The theme, "Believe It or Not," was a hit single in its own right. One piece of trivia: Ralph's surname was briefly changed to Hanley after John Hinckley Jr. shot at President Reagan in 1981.
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The Fall Guy (1981)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Lee Majors is Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a bounty hunter, which gives every episode an excuse to end with his big GMC pickup flying off something. Heather Thomas plays fellow stunt performer Jody Banks, and Majors sings the theme himself, "Unknown Stuntman," a cheerful gripe about never getting the credit.
The bail-jumper plots barely change from week to week. You watch for the car stunts and the backlot Hollywood setting, and both still deliver. If the 2024 Ryan Gosling movie sent you looking, this is the 113-episode original it loosely borrowed from.
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Knight Rider (1982)
7.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The car is the star, and the show knows it. KITT, a customized 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am that talks in William Daniels's dry, fussy voice, turns David Hasselhoff's Michael Knight into half of a double act. Glen A. Larson's formula sets early: a town with a problem, a villain with a truck, a turbo boost over something.
For the best of it, watch "Trust Doesn't Rust" from November 1982, which introduces KARR, KITT's prototype, built without the directive to protect human life. Then try the season 2 two-parter "Goliath," where Hasselhoff also plays the villain, Garthe Knight, at the wheel of a rocket-armed semi-truck.
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Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
Arriving the year after Raiders of the Lost Ark, Donald P. Bellisario's series is the closest TV came to that film's pulp fun: 1938, a South Pacific backwater, and Stephen Collins as Jake Cutter, an ex-Flying Tigers pilot flying a red and white Grumman Goose seaplane for whoever is paying. His sidekick is a one-eyed Jack Russell terrier named Jack.
ABC ran it for one season only, so there is no decline, just a single run of spies, smugglers and island bars. Bellisario said he based it on the 1939 film Only Angels Have Wings. It is the least known show here and the one most likely to surprise someone who thinks they have seen everything the decade made.
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The A-Team (1983)
7.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Four ex-Army special forces men, on the run after being convicted "for a crime they didn't commit," help a different underdog every week, and most episodes end with them improvising weapons and vehicles out of whatever parts are lying around. Hannibal plans, Face talks, B.A. Baracus drives the 1983 GMC Vandura, and Murdock supplies the chaos.
The gunfire never stops, yet almost nobody gets killed, which makes it oddly relaxing. The formula is the most rigid on this list, so it works best a few episodes at a time rather than in a long binge. Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo created it, and five seasons ran to 98 episodes.
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Hardcastle and McCormick (1983)
6.6/10on IMDb
First aired
A judge on the verge of retirement finds files on 200 people who escaped conviction on legal technicalities, and recruits an ex-con race driver to help him bring them in. Brian Keith's crusty Judge Hardcastle and Daniel Hugh Kelly's Mark "Skid" McCormick bicker like father and son, and that relationship is the real draw.
The other draw is the Coyote X, a prototype sports car. From season two it became a different, DeLorean-based Coyote, because Keith had trouble climbing in and out of the original. Another Stephen J. Cannell production, it ran three seasons on ABC and gets far less attention than it deserves.
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Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983)
7.0/10on IMDb
First aired
A spy being chased hands a package to a divorced mom of two and tells her to give it to the man in the red hat. Trouble is, the train is full of men in red fezzes. That opening sets the tone: Kate Jackson's Amanda King ends up working for the Agency alongside Bruce Boxleitner's Lee Stetson, while keeping the job secret from her own family.
It is gentler than the others here, closer to light romance than explosions, and the slow-burn partnership is what keeps fans going through all four seasons on CBS. Pick it for a night when you want adventure with more banter than gunfire.
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Airwolf (1984)
6.7/10on IMDb
First aired
Jan-Michael Vincent plays Stringfellow Hawke, a reclusive former test pilot who keeps an advanced attack helicopter hidden from the agency that built it until they find his brother, St. John, missing since the Vietnam War. Ernest Borgnine is his warm, grizzled partner. The flying, done with a modified Bell 222, is the reason to watch; the Cold War spy plots around it are standard stuff.
Start with the two-hour pilot, "Shadow of the Hawke," and stick to the three CBS seasons. The fourth, made for USA Network with a completely new cast, is a different and much weaker show. Donald P. Bellisario created it, two years after Tales of the Gold Monkey.
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MacGyver (1985)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
The hero who would rather build his way out than shoot his way out. Richard Dean Anderson's Angus MacGyver, a troubleshooter for the Phoenix Foundation, avoids firearms and gets out of trouble with a Swiss Army knife, duct tape and whatever is lying around. The improvised fixes are the pleasure, even when the science is generous.
Seven seasons is a lot of the same trick, so seek out the episodes with Murdoc, the assassin who photographs his victims at the moment of death, starting with "Partners" in season 2. Michael Des Barres plays him with enough menace to raise the stakes. This is the 1985 original, not the 2016 reboot.
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The Equalizer (1985)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Edward Woodward's Robert McCall is a former covert operations officer who places a classified ad, "Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer," and helps New Yorkers with nowhere else to turn, often for free. It is the most grown-up show on this list: real menace on the streets, and a hero in a Jaguar sedan rather than a talking car.
Stewart Copeland of the Police wrote the theme. The pace is slower than the rest, but Woodward's quiet authority carries it. If you only know the Denzel Washington films or the Queen Latifah series, this four-season CBS original from 1985 is where the idea started.
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