THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN

Building a better action series…

Lee Majors as Steve Austin – the 30 billion dollar-plus man, by today’s prices…

1973-78 AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD, DIGITAL

If you were a child in the mid-1970s there were some things you just knew. French bangers could blow your hands off. A monk-like spectre haunted every pond and stream. And to look like you were running super-fast you actually had to move in slow motion while going, ‘Cht-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh…’

The latter, of course, was all thanks to The Six Million Dollar Man, a small-screen phenomenon whose legacy stretches much further than that iconic bionic sound effect. Based on Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg, the show starred Lee Majors as Steve Austin, a former astronaut left close to death after a crash during a test flight. But, as the iconic opening sequence says, ‘We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man…. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.’

Beginning life in 1973 as a trio of hit features in the ABC Movie of the Week line-up, The Six Million Dollar Man made the leap to an ongoing series the following January, catapulting its ruggedly laid-back and self-effacing leading man to stardom. Across five seasons, viewers tuned in to watch Austin pit his bionic enhancements against everything from gangsters and spies to fembots, a seven milliondollar man, aliens and even Bigfoot. In the process, the series cemented the concept of cyborgs in the popular consciousness, paving the way for the likes of The Terminator and RoboCop.

A spin-off series, The Bionic Woman, arrived in 1976 and proved just as big a hit, the two productions generating a deluge of toys, lunch boxes and other merchandise. Character and story crossovers became a regular feature of the two shows; a familiar concept today, but largely unheard of at the time. The focus on a female action hero, Lindsay Wagner’s Jaime Sommers, was even more revolutionary - opening the door to other female-oriented action series such as Wonder Woman and Charlie’s Angels. The less said about Max the bionic dog, though, the better…

While both shows appeared to have run their course by 1978, Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers’ enduring popularity eventually led to the franchise bowing out in the same manner that it had begun, with a trio of made-for-TV reunion movies (19871994) that finally gave the bionic lovebirds the happy ending they deserved.