Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

Today, we start a new series.

Episode 1.1 “Hunter”

(Dir by Ron Satlof, originally aired on September 18th, 1984)

Ah, Hunter.

Hunter is one of those shows that, up unitl now, I’ve never really specifically felt the need to track down and binge but I’ve still seen a handful episodes.  Some of that is because Hunter is a mainstay on the nostalgia channels.  If you fall asleep while watching an old episode of Fantasy Island, there’s a good chance that you’re going to wake up to an episode of Hunter.  Hunter is also a mainstay on both Prime and Tubi.  Again, if you fall asleep watching your favorite Eric Roberts movie, there’s a decent chance that you’re going to wake up to an episode of Hunter.

I have to admit that every episode I’ve seen has been entertaining.  It’s the epitome of an 80s cop show, in all of its action-filled, simplistically-plotted glory.  Rick Hunter (played by former football player Fred Dryer) is a cop who gets results by doing things his way.  “His way” typically involves shooting a lot of people.  (Hunter’s catch phrase?  “Works for me.”)  Hunter’s partner is Dee Dee McCall (Stepfanie Kramer), a cop who gets results by doing things her way.  “Her way” typically involves going undercover and …. uhmm, shooting a lot of people.  And while I am certainly aware of the dangers of police overreach and I generally don’t support shooting anyone without just cause, it’s still fun to watch Hunter and McCall break every regulation in the book.  In almost every episode that I’ve seen, Hunter and McCall end up shooting so many people that the action ends up verging on self-parody.  Fortunately, both Dryer and Kramer appeared to be in on the joke.

(From what I’ve seen, I should also mention that Fred Dryer appears to have been a slightly better actor than some of the other former pro athletes who have decided to go into acting.  He may not have had a huge amount of range but he was still better than most of the basketball players who showed up on Hang Time.  If nothing else, he was better at showing emotion than OJ Simpson.)

With Highway To Heaven completed, I decided that it was time to finally take a look at Hunter.

Hunter premiered with a 90-minute made-for-television movie.  The action starts with Los Angeles Police Detective Rick Hunter crammed into a beat-up car that has definitely seen better days.  Because Hunter is the son of a mobster, he’s not totally trusted by his fellow detectives.  Because he’s a cop, he’s not totally trusted by the mob.  And because he’s a shoot-first renegade, all of his partners end up going to the hospital.  Captain Cain (Michael Cavanaugh) is trying to get him to quit the force and that means only allowing him to drive the department’s worst cars, not allowing Hunter to respond to most calls, and trying to partner him up with bowtie wearing moron, Bernie Terwilliger (James Whitmore, Jr.)

Hunter knows that LAPD regulations will allow him to pick his own partner if he can find someone willing to work with him.  The problem is that no one wants to put their life on the line.  Finally, Hunter tracks down Sgt. Dee Dee McCall, the widow of a fallen officer.  Nicknamed the “Brass Cupake” (cringe!), Dee Dee is currently working undercover as a prostitute and is trying to take down Los Angeles’s biggest pimp, King Hayes (Steven Williams).  Hunter has a proposition for her.  Since neither wants a partner and they both prefer shooting first and asking questions later, why not pretend to work together?  They’ll check in  and out at the station together but, otherwise, they’ll separate and work their own cases once they hit the streets.  McCall agrees.

Unfortunately, Captain Cain is not dumb.  He figures out exactly what they’re doing and he tells them that he will have people watching them to make sure that they are actually working together.  Luckily, McCall has just arrested King Hayes.  Hunter shows up as McCall is handcuffing Hayes and immediately sees that Hayes’s bodyguard is driving his car straight at them.

“You want this guy?” Hunter asks.

“That would be nice,” McCall replies.

Hunter, much like Dirty Harry, proceeds to fire several bullets into the car windshield, causing the car to flip over.

With King Hayes and his bodyguard now taken care of, it’s time for Hunter and McCall to investigate the murders of two blonde women who both enjoyed hanging out at country western bars.  McCall puts on a blonde wig and goes undercover at a honky tonk.  Hunter is shocked to see that she is being stalked by Dr. Bolin (Brian Dennehy), the psychiatrist who the LAPD brought in to examine all of their detectives.  As a viewer, I was not particularly surprised to discover that Dr. Bolin was the killer.  You’re not going to cast an actor like Brian Dennehy on a show like Hunter and then just have him spend the entire episode sitting in his office.  McCall and Hunter work together to stop Bolin before he kills again.

The pilot of Hunter was actually a lot of fun.  The pilot may have been violent but it still had a sense of humor.  The show understood that the sight of 6’6 Fred Dryer crammed into a dented station wagon would not only make the viewer smile but it would also go a long way towards humanizing Hunter as a character.  He may be big and cocky and quick to shoot people but he also has terrible luck when it comes to cars, police radios, and bystanders.  At one point, he even gets pepper-sprayed by Dee Dee’s neighbor.  As for Dee Dee, I liked the fact that she was capable and tough without being a stereotypical action girl.  I also appreciated that she and Hunter chose to work together.  I feared, initially, that the pilot would be full of scenes featuring Hunter whining about having to work with a woman and I appreciated that the show went the opposite direction.  From the start, Hunter respects Dee Dee as a cop and it’s made clear that she has nothing to prove to him.  If anything, Hunter has to earn her respect.

Of course, the main appeal of Hunter is that both Dryer and Kramer looked good holding a gun and yelling at people to “freeze!”  As opposed to the wishy washy police procedurals of today, the pilot of Hunter was absolutely shameless about giving the viewers what they wanted as far as bullets and car chases were concerned.

This was a good pilot.  Watching it, I could understand why the show ended up running for 8 seasons.  And, every Thursday, I’ll be reviewing Hunter.  I look forward to the action!