McCloud is an American police drama television series created by Herman Miller, that aired on NBC from September 16, 1970, to April 17, 1977.

The show was centered on Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud of the small western town of Taos, New Mexico, who was on loan to the metropolitan New York City Police Department (NYPD) as a special investigator.

The pilot, "Portrait of a Dead Girl", aired on February 17, 1970, and established the premise by having McCloud escort a prisoner from New Mexico to New York City, only to become embroiled in solving a complicated murder case.

[2] Herman Miller, who was responsible for the story of Coogan's Bluff and co-wrote the screenplay with Dean Riesner and Howard Rodman, is credited as the creator of McCloud.

NBC picked up the show for six 60-minute episodes in September and October 1970, placing it in the rotation of its original wheel series Four in One along with San Francisco International Airport, The Psychiatrist and Rod Serling's Night Gallery.

The executive producer was Glen A. Larson, who also wrote for the series, as did Peter Allan Fields, Lou Shaw, Jimmy Sangster, and others.

The most enduring theme of the show was the conflict between the good-natured, clear-eyed buoyancy of McCloud and the metropolitan cynicism of the residents of New York City, including his fellow officers.

McCloud's attire, typically consisting of a sheepskin coat or Western jacket, bolo tie and cowboy hat and boots, allowed for implied comic relief in many encounters with New Yorkers.

The signature of McCloud's character was his Western unflappability and seeming inability to recognize an insult, especially from his NYPD superior, Chief of Detectives Peter B. Clifford, whose jibes ("send in the sagebrush Sherlock Holmes") he never would take personally.

Weaver's grin and drawling twang represented McCloud as the embodiment of the American law officer who always sees the good in people but knows the real stakes and spares no pain to catch the bad guy.

The relationship quickly soured based mostly on McCloud's seeming disregard of authority combined with a charm that let him escape many of the consequences of his "cowboy-like" determination.

McCloud was portrayed as something of a ladies' man, and the characters played by the frequent female guest stars would often fall for his protective charm.

At the time, the city seemed to be on an inexorable downward slide into chaos, a theme that was explored in a more brutal fashion in movies such as William Friedkin's film The French Connection, which was released in 1971, the year after the pilot of McCloud, and Michael Winner's 1974 urban thriller Death Wish.

McCloud was filmed partially on location (the unit was in New York for "A Little Plot at Tranquil Valley" notably, and traveled to Hawaii for "A Cowboy in Paradise", to Mexico City and Teotihuacán for "Lady on the Run", and to Sydney for "Night of the Shark" — second-unit footage came from London, Paris, Monaco, Rome, and Moscow at various times), but utilized the Universal back lot for many scenes.

Examples included chases on horseback to lasso cattle rustlers ("The Colorado Cattle Caper"), a 1930s-style gangster shoot-out (the film-within-a-film shot on location in "The Gang That Stole Manhattan"), a Jesse James-style train hold-up on the Long Island Rail Road ("Butch Cassidy Rides Again"), and a showdown with a vampire on the Third Street Bridge ("McCloud Meets Dracula").

Weaver, Cannon and Carter later reprised their roles in a made-for-television movie, The Return of Sam McCloud, which premiered on November 12, 1989 on CBS.

The originals, located after a diligent search by the Australian independent label Madman Entertainment, were found in good condition stored in a vault at a station in London.

In typical Hill fashion, Benny portrayed a host of characters for comic effect from American Crime-dramas of the time such as Cannon, Ironside, and Kojak.

Me-TV brought McCloud to its schedule as part of the late night "MeTV Mystery Movie" programming block which premiered on January 1, 2015.