Hunter - The Complete First Season
The Hunter DVDs



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Season 1 (1984-1985)

Initially placed in a Friday-night slot against the then-popular Dallas (also a Lorimar production), the show struggled to find an audience and drew criticism for its often graphic depiction of violence (though it was fairly mild by the standards of TV in the first decade of the 2000s.) In the first season, the producers sought to create a hook by giving the main character a catch phrase, "Works for me", which was sometimes used two or three times an episode and was even tacked on to the end of Mike Post and Pete Carpenter's opening theme music. Several early episodes featured montages set to popular songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, in a style not unlike the way Miami Vice used music.
Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer in a 1984 photograph together.

Mid-way through the first season, with ratings showing no sign of improvement, Cannell gave network chief Brandon Tartikoff a private screening of a two-part episode ("The Snow Queen") that had yet to air and asked him to give the show time to find its feet. Tartikoff liked what he saw and put the show on hiatus until a better time slot could be found. Two months later, Hunter returned to the screens on Saturday nights and viewership slowly started to rise. The first season ended in joint 79th place in the Nielsen Ratings.