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The Green Hornet aired on Friday nights in the same time-slot as the immensely popular Wild Wild West on a another network, leading to low ratings in the era before videotape and second-chances-through re-runs. Lacking either the strict seriousness of a played-straight crime show or the golly-gee-whiz appeal to children of the colorful and over-the-top 1960s Batman, it never found a larger-than-niche audience.

The half-hour format permitted little character development or hero/side-kick banter (contrast with the generous witty repartee featured in Wild Wild West and I Spy). Shoe-string budgets confined location-shooting to obvious back-lot sets with only occasional forays into the nearby parched Hollywood hills. The footage of Hornet and Kato getting into the Black Beauty (and sometimes doing equipment checks) was recycled in every episode (further emphasizing cheapness).

While not demonstrating any of the 2011 film remake's insinuations of incompetence relative to his ever-capable valet Kato (that being a running gag of the remake), Van Williams' straight-laced portrayal of Britt Reid alias Green Hornet was proficient, but lacking in charisma.

Hornet's nail-in-the-coffin was a particularly awful first season-ending two-parter (easily the worst of the short-lived series) featuring a corpulent mad-scientist unbelievably dressed up as a space alien in a ludicrously asinine and inexplicable plot to set off a nuclear device.

Today, The Greet Hornet is mainly remembered as the first starring role of Bruce Lee, and for its invigorating jazzy title-theme by famed trumpeter Al Hirt.

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Q: Why was the green hornet cancelled?
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