The best hope for rounding up the bad guys isn’t a creature in a bat suit or a hard-drinking homicide cop. No, it’s a former hotel executive who hosted the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” when his 6-year-old son, Adam, was kidnapped and murdered.

The unwelcome news for the evil-doers is that he’s back. Next Monday John Walsh will be cohosting “America’s Most Wanted” again. With his 40-year-old son, Callahan, Walsh returns to the Fox studios to skewer the perpetrators who have, so far, evaded the long arm of the law.

Of course, the real heroes of this task are viewers who may spot somebody in the supermarket or recognize a neighbor and are willing to report their sightings to the police.

So far, the series has helped capture almost 2,000 fugitives, has assisted in locating 65 missing children and has aired more than 1,000 episodes.

Originally launched in 1988, Walsh has been on and off the air through the years with gigs on Lifetime, CNN and Investigation Discovery. But the reason he returns, he says, is because of his father.

“I had a hero dad who was a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II, and on his deathbed I asked him, I said — he died early at 52 of bone cancer — I said, ‘Why did you volunteer to go to World War II? You’ve been a role model my whole life,’ et cetera, et cetera.

“And he said one simple thing. He said, ‘Evil prevails when good men do nothing.’ So I just felt compelled to come out of retirement,” he says.

The pursuit has changed since he began the show, says Walsh.

“The internet is a wonderful thing. It’s the information superhighway, but it’s the hunting ground for bad guys, particularly pedophiles. We catch bad guys through social media, and our friends on social media are diehard. ... I brought a huge social media following to this show, and the world has changed. It’s really become a very much more dangerous place. It’s way different than when I started in 1988 on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ with none of the tools we have now.”

“The internet’s a double-edged sword for us,” adds Callahan. “You know, the internet has created life for the better in so many ways, but it’s created so many new ways to harm children. But technology allows us to recover these missing children faster than ever before, as well, like the Amber alerts.

“Now (social media) is part of everyday life, and we’re really harnessing the power of social media, getting as many eyeballs on these images as possible. Whether it’s our missing children or our wanted fugitives, it’s all about somebody being the linchpin in that investigation that could be the key that unlocks the door to justice. It’s really just about seeing that photo, identifying that individual and then giving us the call, giving us the tip.”

Walsh says he’s never experienced a vigilante reaction in all the years he’s helmed the show. “I thought there’ll be some overzealous nutcase out there, then, as a sense of right, they're going to be the avenger and they're going to take the guy down. And I say it every week, I say, ‘Don’t do this. Let us do it. We're the pros at it. We'll get that guy. He’d be armed and dangerous and you could be putting your life in danger.’

“But we have not had one incidence of anybody picking up a gun. They pick up the phone. They pick up their iPhone. They pick up their computers. They do the right thing. I tell them, ‘Here it is. Don’t take that chance. Call us."

So who calls in the tips? Everybody, says Walsh.

“Over the years we've had at least 30 relatives turn in their own relatives because that relative will run home and hide or go to Mexico or somewhere and say, ‘Oh, the cops want me for stealing a car.’”

Later they realize it’s not just car theft their relatives are guilty of. “They’s say, ‘No, he’s not wanted for stealing a car. He’s wanted for killing his ex-wife or hurting somebody.’ But it’s never ceased to amaze me the range of tips.

“We get tips from everywhere. I caught guys in 45 countries. We get tips online from countries that the show has not even aired in. People are fascinated by crime. They're fascinated by the website. And they're fascinated by what I'm doing. And they just want to do the right thing,” he says.

“So, the tips come from everywhere. We get tips from guys in prison. We're the most watched show in prison. And we have tips from guys in prison who say, ‘I hate child molesters. I've got four kids of my own. This guy’s in my cell under an alias, etc.’ So it never ceases to amaze me, but the tips come far and wide all over the world.”

Oyelowo steals a new life in 'Government Cheese'

David Oyelowo (“Nightingale,” “Selma”) stars as the convicted burglar who returns home to start a new life in the Apple TV+ comedy, “Government Cheese,” premiering Thursday.

Things don’t go as expected when he tries to settle into the civilian life with his oddball relatives.

Oyelowo tells me he arrived at the idea of acting later than most. “I wasn’t one of those kids who wanted to do it since I was very young,” he says. “It wasn’t actually until I was in my mid- to late teens that I started doing enough plays where I was getting the kind of reactions that made me think, ‘Huh, I've found something I’m good at.’

“There were other things I was good at,” he says. “I love painting, drawing, sculpture and I was a pretty good student, but this is something that was late breaking, but something I both loved and seemed to have an aptitude for.

“That kind of came doing youth theater as a teenager, and then I had a great teacher who just said, ‘I wouldn’t say this to everyone because it’s a precarious profession, but I really think you can make a living doing this.’

“So she helped me secretly apply to drama school because my Nigerian parents at that time were not fond of the idea of going into anything to do with the arts. They’re far more academically minded. But I got a scholarship to go to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.”

Josh Duhamel heads for the Texas hills

“Yellowstone” was such a smashing hit that Netflix has meandered over to the badlands with a new series starring Josh Duhamel called “Ransom Canyon.”

Duhamel plays a stoic rancher who is suffering a debilitating loss and is nursing a passion for vengeance in the 10-part series premiering Thursday.

Duhamel, who was so good on “Las Vegas” and the “Transformer” films, tells me that he didn’t really have a game plan to be an actor at all. At first, he tried some modeling in Northern California but decided to come to L.A. to try his luck acting. It was a year before he landed his first acting job.

“The first thing I did was an independent movie. It was the same kind of thing where I started having a breakthrough in the actual audition where I was raging at this girl who broke my heart. The character was like Dorian Gray, a man without a soul basically, and I was verbally abusing this girl in this scene.

“And I said, ‘You know what? Screw it, I'm just going to go for it.’ And I had to pretend like I was breaking these mirrors, and I literally lost it. And they said, ‘Very good.’ I learned that if you're going to go for it, you’ve got to REALLY go for it. People can tell if you really believe it or not, whether you’re phoning it in."

Jessica Biel proves 'The Better Sister'

Jessica Biel will be stealing scenes in the upcoming Prime Video series “The Better Sister,” which premieres on May 29. In the role — based on the book by Alafair Burke — Biel plays a successful business executive who lives the idyllic life until her husband is murdered. Elizabeth Banks portrays the other sister, who’s not as accomplished.

Biel, who was so memorable in “The Sinner,” says she tries to take on a rainbow of roles. “That's the goal for me. Whenever someone says, 'Oh, she can't do it,' I'd like to do it so that I can kind of say, 'Ha! You saw it.' It's also to keep me interested. If I did the same things over and over again, I think that I'd be bored out of my mind. I feel like I change every day. Every week you want something else, and you have a goal, and you want something. I feel like I'm like that every day. I just happen to be in a business where I kind of make that happen in a character and can be this other person and then go and do something totally, totally different.”

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