The Green Hornet was too much like Batman, and not enough like Batman.

After the breakout runaway success of the 1966 Batman TV series, there was an attempt to create another super-crime-fighting half-hour drama series by the same network. And with the same production company that operated the Batman TV series, we received The Green Hornet.

The Green Hornet originally existed as a popular 1940’s radio drama, and expanded to two movie serials from Universal Pictures. There were attempts to make a Green Hornet television series in the 1950’s, but those attempts never got past the planning stage.

But by 1966, the time was right for another masked crimefighter to exist in prime time. Van Williams played the Green Hornet (and his alter ego, wealthy newspaper owner Britt Reid), while Bruce Lee operated as Kato, the Green Hornet’s chauffeur and crime fighting partner. Yes, THAT Bruce Lee.

In September 1966, The Green Hornet debuted on ABC at a Friday night 7:30 p.m. time slot. Apparently Friday nights in 1966 were FULL of fantasy and action shows; The Green Hornet aired opposite Tarzan on NBC and The Wild Wild West on CBS; it also shared the night with NBC’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., ABC’s The Time Tunnel and the British import The Avengers.

And from the start of the Green Hornet TV series, you could tell that the Batman influence was all over the show. Batman narrator William Dozier introduced each episode. The musical cues sounded like Batman outtakes. Heck, there were even a couple of episodes where the Green Hornet and Kato appeared on the Batman TV series in a crossover connection.

But when you push away all the Batman connections, you discover that the Green Hornet isn’t fighting crazy supervillains. He’s battling corruption, counterfeiting, racketeering and other forms of skullduggery. And he’s operating as a criminal himself – the Green Hornet is not, as Batman was, a duly deputized officer of the law; he was perceived as being just as filthy as the criminals he fought.

The Green Hornet was a bad guy? An enemy of the people? What in the name of Dr. Richard Kimble is going on here?

And this show lives on expository. You get maybe one minute of fights and 20 minutes of characters TALKING to each other. It’s like a radio drama you can see. And there’s plenty of reused film footage in this show – from the district attorney visiting the Green Hornet’s lair (using the same entrance footage episode after episode) to the Green Hornet and Kato getting into their car from their lair (well, that’s three minutes of the episode we don’t have to film again, kids).

In the end, though, the few fight scenes per episode are actually worth watching, if for no other reason than to see Bruce Lee’s Kato kick some serious martial arts ass. Trust me, you could have edited all the Kato fight scenes into one consecutive film clip, and it would be sit-down-and-watch TV.

But the question is … how can you watch The Green Hornet today?

It isn’t easy. The broadcast rights are all over the place. The show was filmed by 20th Century Fox, which means that the show is probably owned by Disney today. But the rights to the Green Hornet character are owned by the estate of his creator, George Trendle, so a legitimate home video release is currently unlikely.

That being said, you can watch some of the Green Hornet episodes on YouTube, and I’ve linked a couple here. This is the debut episode, “The Silent Gun,” about a pistol that kills without making noise.

This episode, “The Preying Mantis,” shows off Kato’s kung fu action. Just think, you could have had Bruce Lee playing the lead in the 1970’s Kung Fu series and it would have been glorious. And … he’s fighting Academy Award winner Mako? How have I not seen this yet??

Eventually there was an episode of Batman where the Green Hornet and Kato crossed over, as the two teams battled against an evil stamp collector named Colonel Gumm. Man, by this time, the Batman TV show was scraping the bottom of the barrel for wacky supervillains.

Yeah, you know Kato would have kicked Robin into next week’s episode if he didn’t hold back.

The show lasted only one season, 26 episodes in total. It’s a fun watch, and there are some great moments in it, but yeah, it needed to be its own show and not tied to the Batman televised universe, and all that that entails. The last thing I need was a serious Green Hornet episode and suddenly the Joker walks into the Daily Sentinel.

Still … 26 half-hour episodes, with commercials removed, can be a great binge -watch on YouTube on a rainy day. And that Al Hirt trumpet on the Flight of the Bumble Bee intro music is straight-up fire.

For sure.