We all love a sci-fi series that takes an ordinary guy and puts him into the most outlandish situation. We love them, because we love a “what if?” and we watch them because we want to see what they can do. And when you get something deep in the realms of science fiction as far back as 1973, you know that’s going to get eyes on your show. That’s exactly what happened 5 decades ago, and it’s happening again now on streaming and digital.

The Six Million Dollar Man has become a surprise PVOD hit on the Apple TV Store, climbing to No. 3 among the most-downloaded television series in the United States, according to FlixPatrol. That puts the 1970s sci-fi action series ahead of several much newer shows, including Landman and George & Mandy’s First Marriage. The series has also been performing well in Canada, where it has reportedly remained in the Top 10 since May 6. Not bad for a show that ended before half of today’s streaming executives were born.

The ABC series follows Colonel Steve Austin, a test pilot whose life is changed after a catastrophic accident leaves him badly injured. However, they can rebuild him, because they have the technology. Or so they say. A secretive government program rebuildings him with bionic implants and turns him into a $6 million super soldier, essentially. But obviously, sci-fi governments have zero chill so they send him all over the place as a secret agent.

The cast includes Lee Majors (The Fall Guy, Big Valley) as Colonel Steve Austin, Richard Anderson (Paths of Glory, Forbidden Planet) as Oscar Goldman, Martin E. Brooks (Dallas, The Bionic Woman) as Dr. Rudy Wells, and Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman, Nighthawks) as Jaime Sommers. Wagner’s character became so popular that she spun off into The Bionic Woman, turning the franchise into one of the most recognizable sci-fi TV worlds of its era.

The series first ran between 1974 and 1978, which followed a trio of TV movies that first began in 1973, and then as TV was wont to do, had a ton of reunion movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The series also holds an 80% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s highly regarded as well.

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hollywood has certainly tried. A modern reboot has been in some form of development for years, with **Mark Wahlberg **once attached to star in a film version titled The Six Billion Dollar Man, because inflation comes for us all. Six million won’t get you much at Whole Foods these days, never mind rebuilding you. Warner Bros. has held the rights to the project, though there has not been a major recent update on the film. At this point, the reboot is basically bionic vaporware, but stranger things have happened. Plus, it makes a lot of sense because we have AI, surveillance states, paranoia, private defense contractors, you name it. It might be too on the nose, in fact.

The Six Million Dollar Man is available to buy or rent on the Apple TV Store.

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