Starsky and Hutch - International Broadcasts

International Broadcasts

• On March 15, 1979 in Italy, Starsky and Hutch was aired on Rai Due achieving smash-hit status. In 1987 it was broadcast again, this time in the late afternoon, on Italia 1 and in 2007 on Rai Tre at lunchtime. After some reruns on Italia 1 and AXN, in 2009 the series appeared Mondays on Fox Retro. It is currently aired in the early morning on Rete 4.
• In France, the show was shown on TF1. The French version replaces the original theme(s) with a French song, singing about "Starsky et Hutch".
• In the United Kingdom, the series was an immediate hit when it began showing on Saturday nights on BBC1 (debuting 23 April 1976, and soon catching up with US broadcasts), with occasional re-runs through to the early 1990s. It was re-run by Five in 2003 in a 10 a.m. slot (later 11 a.m., and eventually moving to a 2:30 p.m. slot); During its prime-time run, however, the BBC heavily edited or skipped altogether certain episodes; in fact, the first season episode "The Fix" (in which mobsters inject Hutch with heroin in order to extract information from him) was deemed too graphic and was effectively "banned" from all the corporation's runs of the series (despite being shown after the 9 p.m. 'watershed'). Several other controversial episodes did on occasion air, but were heavily edited and / or seldom aired due to their nature. "The Fix" was never shown on British terrestrial television until May 31, 1999, as part of Channel 4's "Starsky & Hutch Night" (which also included the pilot, The Word On The Street - a documentary about the series - and the second season episode "Gillian"). On January 10, 2003, Five actually broadcast "The Fix" in their regular 10 a.m. slot; however, the episode was notably edited, and the scene of Hutch being injected with heroin was almost completely absent. The series was also shown on the UK satellite channel Granada Plus, and is now running on Zone Thriller, which was rebranded as CBS Action in November 2009. The channel has broadcast all episodes, with minor edits in a few cases.
• The first season is frequently aired on the Middle East Broadcasting Center with Arabic subtitles.
• In Australia it airs on Digital Channel Go!.
• In Malaysia it currently reruns on Malaysian Government's Channel, Radio Televisyen Malaysia 2 (TV2), Best of Retro slot, in 2009.
• In Venezuela, the show was aired on Venevisión.
• In Algeria, the show was aired in French on ENTV state television during the second half of the 80-s, and was a big success.