Hunter is an American crime drama television series created by Frank Lupo that ran on NBC from September 18, 1984, to April 26, 1991. It stars Fred Dryer as Sergeant Rick Hunter and Stepfanie Kramer as Sergeant Dee Dee McCall, and Charles Hallahan as Captain Charles "Charlie" Devane. The title character Sgt. Rick Hunter is a wily, physically imposing, often rule-breaking homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department (originally called Los Angeles Metropolitan Police Department).
The show's executive producer during the first season was Stephen J. Cannell, whose company produced the series. Stepfanie Kramer left after the sixth season (1990) to pursue other acting and musical opportunities. For the seventh and final season, Hunter had two new partners: Officer Joanne Molenski (Darlanne Fluegel) for the first seven episodes, then Sergeant Chris Novak (Lauren Lane) for the remaining eleven.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Dryer (and eventually Kramer) returned for a trio of TV movies. A short-lived revival aired in 2003, consisting of five feature-length episodes.
Premise Though the world may perceive Los Angeles as a sunny paradise, Rick Hunter only sees a dark underbelly of street violence.
Hunter is a plainclothes police detective (a la "Dirty Harry") whose world is made up of pimps, low-lifes and psychopaths. This life has toughened him. Although sharp and dedicated, he will sometimes go to dangerous extremes to apprehend a criminal. Because of this he is in constant conflict with his straight arrow administrative officer, Lester Cain. Cain is a desk-bound officer who is more concerned with paperwork than with cleaning up the streets. He throws spanners into Hunter's cases whenever possible. Hunter, who is constantly trying to buck the system anyway, just sees Cain as a minor annoyance until Cain requires him to work with a full-time partner.Panorama newspaper; Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation Highlights; 06/02/1989; Page 18
Knowing that any typical partner will severely cramp his style, Hunter recruits Sgt. Dee Dee McCall to officially become his partner on pretense: they will report to headquarters together at the beginning and end of each day, to keep Cain off their backs, but for the rest of the day they will go their own ways and do their own work without interference with each other. McCall is a hard-edged policewoman whose unorthodox detective work, which rivals that of Hunter's, is not that of a typical female police detective. McCall insists on independence as much as Hunter does; she initially agrees to be his partner only with his total assurance that they will not have to actually work together.
Very shortly, Cain discovers that the two are separating after leaving headquarters, and he orders them to stay together at all times while on duty, while enforcing this with close monitoring. Thus forced against their wills to work together, over time Hunter and McCall gradually develop both a mutual respect and a close personal bond of friendship, both of which in combination make them a very effective team.
Hunter's backstory Rick Hunter's father was a mobster involved in organized crime who was nearly killed in a shoot-out with rival gangsters. This made Hunter estrange himself from that world and he decided to become a police officer. He notes that his father approved his decision and was in the front row when Hunter graduated the police academy. Hunter would, on occasion, contact relatives and acquaintances in those criminal families for information (provided it did not directly involve them) whenever he had a particularly difficult case to crack.
Cast and crew
Original series Fred Dryer as Detective Sergeant Richard "Rick" Hunter Stepfanie Kramer as Detective Sergeant Dee Dee McCall (1984–90) Darlanne Fluegel as Officer Joanne Molenski (1990–91) Lauren Lane as Sergeant Chris Novak (1991) Michael Cavanaugh as Captain Lester D. Cain ("Pilot" Only) Arthur Rosenberg as Captain Lester D. Cain / Commander Lester D. Cain (1984/1987) John Amos as Captain Dolan (1984–85) Bruce Davison as Captain Wyler / Deputy Chief Wyler (1985–86/1987) Charles Hallahan as Captain Charles "Charlie" Devane (1986–91) John Shearin as Lieutenant Ambrose Finn (1985–88) James Whitmore Jr. as Sergeant Bernie Terwilliger (1984–86) Garrett Morris as Arnold "Sporty" James (1986–89) Richard Beauchamp as Carlos (Assistant Medical Examiner) (1985–87) Perry Cook as Barney Udall (Coroner) (1986–90) Stanley Kamel as Governor Agent Brad Wilkes (1987–88) Paul Mantee as Commander Tom Clayton (1989–1991) Courtney Barilla as Allison Novak (1991)
TV movies and revival series Fred Dryer as Detective Lieutenant Richard "Rick" Hunter Charles Hallahan as Captain Charles "Charlie" Devane (1995 only) Stepfanie Kramer as Detective Sergeant Dee Dee McCall (2002–2003) Mike Gomez as Captain Roberto Gallardo Michelle Gold as Officer/Detective Cynthia Monetti Sid Sham as Officer/Detective Sid Keyes Meredyth Hunt as Detective Krysta Carson (TV movies only) (2002–2003) Frank Grillo as Detective Terence Gillette (TV movies only) (2002–2003) Kenneth Taylor as Officer Mueller (TV movies only) (2002–2003) Robert Crow as Officer Wilcher (TV movies only) (2002–2003) Alex Mendoza as Detective Anthony Santiago (series episodes only) (2003)
Episodes
Season 1 (1984–85) The two-part pilot episode of Hunter debuted on Tuesday, September 18, 1984, airing after the season-three premiere of The A-Team, and ended with strong ratings. Ten days later, starting with its third episode, it was moved to its regular timeslot on Friday nights, this time competing for ratings against Dallas, the second-most watched show for the 1984–85 television season. The show struggled to attract 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 in an episode and was even added 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, in a style similar to Miami Vice, another NBC show which debuted that same season and initially aired right after Hunter.
Midway through the first season, with low ratings still, Cannell gave network chief Brandon Tartikoff a private screening of the two-part episode "The Snow Queen", which had not yet aired, and asked him to give the show more time to attract viewers. Tartikoff agreed and put the show on hiatus until a better time slot could be found.Hunter 1st Season DVD set (region 1), DVD special-feature interview of Stephen Cannell Two months later, Hunter resumed, this time on Saturday nights, and viewership slowly started to rise. The first season finished in 65th place.
Season 2 (1985–86) 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 pushed up the violence but softened the main character's fractious relationship with his superiors, dropped a backstory concerning Hunter's family ties to the mob, and emphasized the chemistry between Hunter and McCall. Captain Cain was replaced with Captain Wyler, who unlike Cain was not always looking for an excuse to fire Hunter; instead, Wyler viewed Hunter with ordinary respect and generally defended Hunter and McCall as members of his squad. 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 improvised the scripts, and the Hunter character broke the fourth wall for the first time with an aside to viewers at the end of the episode "The Beautiful and the Dead".
Probably the most memorable aspect to the second season was the two-part episode "Rape and Revenge", which may have drawn from some diplomatic-immunity scandals that were prominent in the news. A psychopathic foreign diplomat meets McCall and wants to have a relationship with her, and after she declines, he brutally rapes her in her home. Hunter is badly shot in the shoulder and must recover quickly, then go to the diplomat's home country to dispense justice, Hunter-style. This episode was considered very controversial for its realistic and shocking (violent, but not sexually graphic) depiction of a violent rape, which was not common in TV shows at the time. Because of the controversial plot and convincing acting, "Rape and Revenge" is one of the most remembered and popular episodes of the series.
Another important development in the second season came near its end (in the episode "The Return of Typhoon Thompson"), when viewers were first introduced to Hunter and McCall's favorite street informant, the humorous Arnold "Sporty" James, played by Garrett Morris. "Sporty" would continue to appear from time to time, usually in one or two short scenes of an episode but occasionally as a major supporting character, through the coming seasons.
Viewers also responded to Huggins' changes, and the show's second season ended in 38th place in the Nielsen ratings. Hunter continued this progress to become a mainstay of NBC's Saturday-night schedule.
In syndication, the season-two introduction (titles sequence) was replaced by the season-one introduction. The former showed Hunter entering a women's locker room in one scene, and McCall and him pointing their guns at each other with the bathroom light on in another scene.
Season 3 (1986–87) Just before work on the third season began, Dryer threatened to quit unless his salary, reportedly US$21,000 per episode, was raised and creative changes were made. Cannell responded with a US$20 million breach-of-contract lawsuit. A compromise was reached, a new deal with Dryer reportedly earning US$50,000 per episode. The third season, again led by Huggins, added Charles Hallahan as Captain Charlie Devane, who remained Hunter and McCall's captain for the rest of the show, eventually included in the opening credits of the show and becoming one of the show's main stars (none of the previous captains in the series had achieved this). This was the show's first season in the top 30, coming in at 25th.
In the episode "Shades" (which was the season finale, but aired later in the summer, in July 1987) when Hunter went missing, McCall teamed with a somewhat ditzy Columbo-like Detective Sergeant Kitty O'Hearn (Shelley Taylor Morgan). O'Hearn reappeared during the season-four three-part episode "City of Passion". Another remembered episode from season three was "Requiem For Sergeant McCall", which was a contradiction to a storyline from the beginning of the show. When the show first started, McCall's husband (Steven McCall) was supposedly killed five years before, in 1979, by a "punk" kid during a routine stop. At that time, Steven and Dee Dee were newly married and starting out as rookie uniform cops. However, in 1987, in "Requiem", just five years before (which would be around 1982 instead of 1979), Steven was a homicide detective (while Dee Dee was still just a rookie) and he was working on a big murder case that resulted in him being killed. In "Requiem", Steven's killer is getting paroled, and Dee Dee McCall is doing everything she can to get him back in prison — plus trying to crack the original murder case that Steven died trying to solve five years earlier.