Hunter is an American crime drama television series created by Frank Lupo that ran on NBC from September 18, 1984, to April 26, 1991.

Rick Hunter is a wily, physically imposing, often rule-breaking homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

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.

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.

Hunter, who is constantly trying to buck the system anyway, just sees Cain as a minor annoyance until he is assigned with a female detective partner.

Despite this, 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.

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.

Midway through the first season, with low ratings still, Cannell gave network chief Brandon Tartikoff a private screening of a two-part episode ("The Snow Queen") that had not yet aired and asked him to give the show more time to attract viewers.

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".

Hunter is badly shot in the shoulder and must recover quickly, then go to the diplomat's home country to dispense justice, Hunter-style.

Another important aspect to the second season was towards 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.

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.

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).

This was based on the real-life incident Saldana herself was a victim of when she was stalked and brutally stabbed by Scottish immigrant and drifter, Arthur Richard Jackson, outside her Los Angeles home in 1982.

This reflected a change in the format where the frequent car chases and shootouts from the first three seasons were dropped and the show became more of a standard police procedural, with only occasional action scenes.

Another sub-plot involved a corrupt Deputy Chief named Curtis Moorehead (Robert Vaughn), who continually hamstrung the entire police department's efforts to find Iris and Billy Joe in order to further his own ends.

He had a teenage daughter, Debbie (Brynn Horrocks) who was a good-hearted but troubled young woman whom McCall befriended while she was working undercover at her high school investigating the murder of one of the teachers named Sandra Clemens.

Another subplot of the story revolved around Johnny Youngblood (Craig Hurley), a mover and shaker at the school who dealt in various shady enterprises.

In part two, Laurelle Brooks guest-starred as Allison, a naive high-school cheerleader who falls under Johnny's charms and unknown to her, make a videotape of them having sex.

Fred Dryer stated that this episode was filmed to try to appease fans and the network, who were constantly wanting Hunter and McCall to get together.

In this episode, a Vietnamese man visits Hunter and pleads with him to take on the case of a robbery and murder at an upscale car dealership, of which his son was the main suspect.

However, at the end of the sixth season, which placed 26th in the Nielsen ratings, Stepfanie Kramer decided to leave the series to pursue a career in music.

Hunter's signature unmarked vehicle, a moss green 1977 Dodge Monaco, was also finally replaced (after an accident with Molenski's cruiser in the season's first episode) by an updated new silver 1990 Ford LTD Crown Victoria.

Airing on April 30, 1995,[4] the movie seemed to take the Dirty Harry idea as the plot—a psycho wants fame and/or to be noticed and begins terrorizing the city to gain media attention.

This time, Stepfanie Kramer returned to her role as McCall, and the show's setting switched from Los Angeles to San Diego—as Hunter's current L.A. partner is killed in the line of duty.

The network decided to broadcast three new one-hour episodes of Hunter ("Vaya Sin Dios", "Untouchable", and "Dead Heat").

Captain Charles "Charlie" Devane drove a brand new light blue metallic 1988 Ford LTD Crown Victoria hard top sedan starting in season 4.

The 1989 was then replaced in season 7 with a 1990 Ford LTD Crown Victoria hardtop sedan, while it was the same color as the 1989 model, the difference was the updated air bag included dashboard and steering wheel.

On October 14, 2009, Mill Creek Entertainment was announced to have acquired the rights to several Stephen J. Cannell series, including Hunter.