[a] The show starred Jack Lord as Detective Captain Stephen "Steve" McGarrett, the head of a fictional state police task force in Hawaii.

The show centers on a fictional state police force led by former U.S. naval officer Steve McGarrett (played by Jack Lord), a detective captain, who is appointed by the Governor, Paul Jameson.

In the show, McGarrett oversees state police officers – the young Danny "Danno" Williams, veteran Chin Ho Kelly, and streetwise Kono Kalakaua for seasons one through four.

Honolulu Police Department Officer Duke Lukela joined the team as a regular, as did Ben Kokua, who replaced Kono beginning with season five.

Sandi Wells (Amanda McBroom), medical examiner Doc Bergman (Al Eben), forensic specialist Che Fong (Harry Endo), and a secretary.

[3] The Five-O team consists of three to five members (small for a real state police unit), and is portrayed as occupying a suite of offices in ʻIolani Palace.

For 12 seasons, McGarrett and his team pursued international secret agents, criminals, and organized crime syndicates plaguing the Hawaiian Islands.

Other criminals and organized crime bosses on the islands were played by actors such as Ricardo Montalbán, Gavin MacLeod, and Ross Martin as Tony Alika.

By the 12th and final season, series regular James MacArthur had left the show (in 1996, he admitted that he had become tired of the role and wanted to do other things), as had Kam Fong.

McGarrett's tousled yet immaculate hairstyle, as well as his proclivity for wearing a dark suit and tie on all possible occasions (uncommon in the islands), rapidly entered popular culture.

[6] A 1975 episode involving Danno's aunt, played by MacArthur's mother Helen Hayes, provided a bit of Williams' back story.

[7][8] Another source instead claims that Freeman wanted to set a show in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California until his friend Richard Boone convinced him to shoot it entirely in Hawaiʻi.

Zulu was a Waikīkī beach boy and local DJ with no acting experience when he was cast for the part of Kono, which he played for the next four years.

The first season was shot in a rusty military Quonset hut in Pearl City, which the various cast members quickly nicknamed "Mongoose Manor".

Lord's high standards helped the show last another six years after Leonard Freeman's death from heart trouble during the sixth season.

[14] To critics and viewers, there was no question that Jack Lord was the center of the show, and that the other actors frequently served as little more than props, standing and watching while McGarrett emoted and paced around his office, analyzing the crime.

Early shows began with a cold open suggesting the sinister plot for that episode, then cut to a shot of a big ocean wave and the start of the theme song.

[19] A grass-skirted hula dancer from the pilot episode was also included, played by Helen Kuoha-Torco, who later became a business professor at Windward Community College.

[20] The opening scene ended with shots of the supporting players, and the flashing blue light of a police motorcycle racing through a Honolulu street.

When the show premiered in 1968, Hawaiʻi had been a state for only nine years and was relatively obscure to Americans who had never served in the Pacific Theater, but as a geographic part of Polynesia it had an exotic image.

In Episode 10 of Season 2, "The Taking of Dick McWilliams," Rick Wright answers Thomas Magnum when asked about a license plate search that the car belonged to someone on Five-O named McGarrett.

"Bored, She Hung Herself", the 16th episode of the second season, depicted a Five-O investigation into the apparent suicide of a woman by hanging, which she was supposedly practicing as part of a health regimen.

[26] In July 1996, it was announced producer George Litto had partnered with Leonard Freeman's estate and his widow, Rose, in developing a theatrical adaptation of Hawaii Five-O with a $50 million-$70 million budget and franchise potential.

[27] Directors whom Litto expressed interest in helming the project included Andrew Davis, Brian De Palma, and Paul Verhoeven.

[30] Several cameos were made by other Five-O regulars, including Kam Fong as Chin Ho Kelly[31] (even though the character had been killed off at the end of Season 10).

[citation needed] A remake pilot, called Hawaii Five-0 (the last character is a zero instead of the letter "O"; the original series used an "O" as zero was typed as a capital O), aired September 20, 2010, on CBS.

The new series opening credit sequence was an homage to the original; the theme song was cut in half, from 60 to 30 seconds, but was an otherwise identical instrumentation.

Most of the iconic shots were replicated, beginning with the helicopter approach and close-up turn of McGarrett at the Ilikai Hotel penthouse, the jet engine nacelle, a hula dancer's hips, the quickly stepped zoom-in to the face of the Lady Columbia statue at Punchbowl, the close-up of the Kamehameha Statue's face, and the ending with a police motorcycle's flashing blue light.

4 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart,[5] and is particularly popular with college and high school marching bands, especially at the University of Hawaiʻi where it has become the unofficial fight song.

A soundtrack album featuring Morton Stevens' theme and incidental music from the pilot and the first two seasons was issued by Capitol Records in 1970.