Hunter was a police drama television series starring Fred Dryer which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The titular character, Rick Hunter, was a wily, physically imposing and oftentimes rule-breaking homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Stepfanie Kramer co-starred as Hunter's female partner Dee Dee McCall. Created by Frank Lupo, the show in its early episodes played as television's answer to Dirty Harry. The show's co-executive producer was noted producer Stephen J. Cannell. Cannell's company produced the series. In an odd coincidence, the main character of the first part of the Robotech animated series (adapted from the Japanese series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross), airing one year later, was also named Rick Hunter. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Fred Dryer (born July 6, 1946 in Hawthorne, California) is an American actor and former American football player in the National Football League (NFL). ... The National Broadcasting Company or NBC is an American television broadcasting company based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the police department of the City of Los Angeles, California. ... Stepfanie Kramer (born August 6, 1956 Los Angeles, California) is an American actress and singer. ... Dirty Harry is a 1971 film directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan, a San Francisco detective tracking Scorpio, a serial killer. ... Stephen J. Cannell (born May 2, 1941) (pronounced CAN-ULL) is an Emmy award winning television producer, writer, novelist and occasional actor from the USA. Noted for sophisticated, character-driven writing within genre formats, Cannell has created or co-created nearly 40 different shows, including The Rockford Files, The Greatest... Robotech is an 85-episode animated science-fiction television series about three successive extraterrestrial invasions of Earth. ... The titular ship, SDF-1 Macross. ... Rick Hunter is also the main character of the TV series Hunter (TV), starring Fred Dryer as Rick Hunter. ...

Initially placed in a Friday-night slot against the then-popular Dallas, the show struggled to find an audience and drew criticism for its often graphic depiction of violence. In the first season, the producers sought to create a hook by giving the main character a catchphrase, "Works for me", which was sometimes used two or three times an episode and was even tacked on to the end of Mike Post and Pete Carpenter's opening theme music. Several early episodes featured montages set to popular songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Dallas was a long-running primetime television soap opera about the Ewings, a wealthy Texas oil family. ... Mike Post (born Leland Michael Postil on September 29, 1944) is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning composer of music and theme songs for many of the most popular TV dramas first shown in the United States. ...

Mid-way through the first season, with ratings showing no sign of improvement, Cannell gave network chief Brandon Tartikoff a private screening of a two-part episode ("The Snow Queen") that had yet to air and asked him to give the show time to find its feet. Tartikoff liked what he saw and put the show on hiatus until a better time slot could be found. Two months later, Hunter returned to the screens on Saturday nights and viewership slowly started to rise. The first season ended in joint 79th place in the Nielsen Ratings. Hunter would go on to become a mainstay of NBC's Saturday night schedule. Brandon Tartikoff (July 13, 1949 – August 27, 1997) was a popular NBC executive who was credited with turning around NBCs low prime-time reputation with such hit series as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Miami Vice, The Golden Girls, Knight Rider, The... When TV viewers or entertainment professionals in the United States mention ratings they are generally referring to Nielsen Ratings, a system developed by the New York City-based firm Nielsen Media Research to determine which shows television viewers watch at what times. ...

For its second season, Cannell brought in his mentor, Roy Huggins, best known for his work on Maverick and The Rockford Files, to refine the show. As the new executive producer, Huggins toned down the violence, softened the main character's fractious relationship with his superiors, dropped a backstory concerning Hunter's family ties to the mob, and played up the chemistry between Rick Hunter and Dee Dee McCall. Huggins also moved the show's setting out of the back streets and into the more desirable areas of Los Angeles. Emboldened, Dryer and Kramer frequently toyed with the scripts by ad-libbing, and the Hunter character broke the fourth wall for the first time with an aside to viewers at the end of the two-parter "The Beautiful And The Dead". Viewers responded to the changes, and the show's second season ended in 38th place in the Nielsen Ratings. Roy Huggins (July 18, 1914 – April 3, 2002) was a novelist and an influential writer and producer of humorous, character-driven US television series. ... Maverick is a comedy-western television series created by Roy Huggins that ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and featured James Garner and Roger Moore as poker-playing travelling gamblers. ... The Rockford Files was an American detective (private investigator) television drama that had its first run on the NBC television network between 1974 and 1980 and has been in constant syndication to the present day. ... This article is about the largest city in California. ... The fourth wall is the imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. ...

Just before work on the third season began, Dryer threatened to walk out unless his salary, reportedly US$21,000 per episode, was raised and creative changes were made. Cannell hit back with a US$20m breach-of-contract suit. A compromise was reached, with Dryer reportedly landing a new deal worth US$50,000 per episode. The third season, again helmed by Huggins, saw the arrival of Charles Hallahan as Captain Charlie Devane.

Huggins retired at the end of the fourth season, which placed 18th in the Nielsen Ratings.

For the fifth season, George Geiger took on the role of executive producer, having worked in the same capacity on Scarecrow and Mrs. King and as co-executive producer on Miami Vice. While in the first four seasons Hunter and McCall typically worked on cases together, allowing the producers to showcase the chemistry between the actors, the fifth season increasingly had them working separately, ostensibly to lessen the workload of Dryer and Kramer and to allow richer, more complex stories. Scarecrow and Mrs. ... Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in Miami Vice Miami Vice was a popular television series (five seasons on NBC from 1984-1989) starring Don Johnson (James Sonny Crockett) and Philip Michael Thomas (Ricardo Rico Tubbs) as two Miami police detectives working undercover. ...

By the sixth season, Dryer's growing influence had won him the role of executive producer. The sixth season featured one episode ("Unfinished Business") in which it was revealed that Hunter and McCall had once slept together. At the end of the sixth season, which placed in the top 25 of the Nielsen Ratings, Kramer left to pursue a career in music. In the season's final episode, McCall was shown marrying an old flame.

For the seventh and final season, the producers moved the lead character from homicide to metro division, and NBC shifted the show to 10pm, Wednesdays. A new female co-star, Darlanne Fluegel, was brought in, only to leave halfway through the season. Her replacement was Lauren Lane. Image:Ccbabs. ...

A revival TV movie, "The Return of Hunter: Everybody Walks in L.A.", saw Dryer and Hallahan reprise their roles. Airing on NBC in 1995, the movie took the O.J. Simpson case as its inspiration. O.J. Simpsons mugshot Orenthal James Simpson (born July 9, 1947 in San Francisco, California), publicly known by the initials O.J., and nicknamed The Juice, is a Hall of Fame former college and professional football player and film actor. ...

In April 2002, 11 years after the original series ended, the TV movie "Hunter: Return to Justice" made its premiere to strong ratings. Kramer returned to her role of McCall, but the show's setting switched from Los Angeles to San Diego. After a second TV movie, "Hunter: Back in Force", Cannell, Dryer and NBC attempted to bring back Hunter as a regular series in 2003. It was cancelled after three episodes aired, with another two filmed but never shown in the US. 2002 (MMII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... San Diego County in the Southwest corner of California. ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Hunter at the Internet Movie Database
• The Wonderful World of Hunter