This Rarely Talked About ’80s Cop Drama Starred A Former NFL Player In The Title Role

Football fans might know Fred Dryer for his career playing for the NFL in the ’70s, but TV viewers might better recognize him from his starring role in an ’80s crime drama. For seven seasons, the former defensive end played the titular hard-edged, take-no-prisoners LA cop in the NBC series “Hunter.”

Premiering in September 1984, “Hunter” starred Dryer as Detective Sergeant Rick Hunter, a physically imposing man who grew up in the world of organized crime but opted to bring justice to the streets as a plainclothes officer. Comparisons between “Hunter” and Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” movies were commonplace, though Dryer himself didn’t think they were that similar despite the two characters’ shared propensity to carry big guns and ignore pesky rules. “Dirty Harry is such a straight-ahead hardass; I just couldn’t do that week after week,” Dryer said, according to TV Guide. “Hunter sees more of the humor in situations.”

“Hunter” would run until 1991. Newspaper reports from the time stated that Dryer was partially to blame for the axing, as he’d demanded his salary increase from $150,000 to $350,000 per episode. NBC said no, but it wouldn’t be the last TV audiences saw of Rick Hunter.

Fred Dryer, who nearly also got cast as Sam Malone in “Cheers,” would continue to make regular appearances on the small screen, including credits in “Land’s End,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” and the animated “Justice League” series. He seemingly couldn’t stay away from “Hunter,” though. Just four years after the show ended, the NBC TV movie “The Return of Hunter: Everyone Walks in L.A.” aired. The film follows Hunter as he investigates a case that hits close to home — his fiancée has been murdered, and her ex, a famous basketball coach, is the prime suspect.

As Variety noted ahead of the movie’s debut, the plot reminded people of another football player-turned-actor who was even more famous — and then much more infamous — than Dryer. The O.J. Simpson murder trial was ongoing when “The Return of Hunter” premiered, leading to suspicion that the movie was part of O.J. Simpson’s influence on TV. NBC’s West Coast president, Don Ohlmeyer, a friend and defender of Simpson, was suspected of pushing for the movie to be about an athlete who is ultimately falsely accused of murder. However, a spokesperson for the network said the story was Dryer’s idea.

Two more TV movies, “Hunter: Return to Justice” and “Hunter: Back in Force,” aired on NBC in 2002 and 2003, again with Dryer in the lead. The network attempted to revive “Hunter” as a TV series, filming five episodes and airing three of them in 2003 following “Hunter: Back in Force,” but it was ultimately abandoned.