Frank Murphy, the leader of a specialized unit of detectives and police officers whose job is to stop violent criminals at any cost (usually with a hail of gunfire).

Mixing elements of Stack's classic television series The Untouchables from 20 years earlier with doses of Mission: Impossible and Dirty Harry, Strike Force immediately provoked controversy over its violence – at one point the series was labeled the most violent in American TV history.

[citation needed] The series attempted to balance the violence by interjecting liberal amounts of humor into its regular characters and focusing on the detectives' personal lives.

[11] According to Todd Gitlin's 1983 book Inside Prime Time, Strike Force finished a dismal 76 out of 105 shows in the Nielsen ratings for the 1981–82 season.

[12] Another factor in the series' demise was the competition: ABC pitted Strike Force against the successful CBS soap-opera Falcon Crest, which had, as its lead-in, the then-number one show on television, Dallas.