As crew members scramble to compensate for a setting sun on the streets of San Diego, Fred Dryer, in a suit and tie as Detective Rick Hunter, strides into a convenience store, gives the crime scene there a once-over, talks briefly with a young police officer, then strides out.
Still not satisfied, Dryer wants another take — and gets it.
After seven seasons on the original “Hunter” series, Dryer knows what he wants from the character. And what he thinks America wants is more of “Hunter.”
On Saturday, Nov. 16, he finds out if he’s right, with the premiere of “Hunter: Return to Justice,” the first of two such films scheduled to air on NBC this season. They reunite former LAPD partners Hunter and Dee Dee McCall (Stepfanie Kramer), along with “Hunter” executive producers Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo.
Relaxing in his trailer, the trim, fit Dryer says he thinks the time is ripe for the return of the police drama, a Saturday staple for NBC from 1984 to 1991.
“So I sat back and watched the last 11 years of programming that the networks are trying to do,” Dryer says, “and there are times that I went in, in ’93 and ’94, and they didn’t want to talk to me, because I was ‘old’ television.
“A bunch of people told the programmers, ‘We want young shows, and anybody who’s over 35, 40 years of age, we don’t want them,’ which is nonsense.”
In the meantime, Chuck Norris’ “Walker, Texas Ranger” spent many successful years on CBS on Saturday nights. “All Chuck Norris did,” Dryer says, “was take the audience that wanted to see ‘Hunter.’ So my thought was, we could go back to (NBC programming chief) Jeff Zucker and say, ‘Look, give us two movies. Throw it on Saturday night, and I’ll guarantee you it will be the best thing you’ve had on Saturday night since I left in ’91.’ “
“It was one of the shortest meetings I’ve ever had,” Cannell recalls. “Jeff said, ‘The problem is, there’s so little advertising revenue.’ I said, ‘I think we can make a really good-looking picture for the right price.’ So we came to an agreement and agreed to do two of them.”
In “Return to Justice,” with his partner dead after a drug bust gone bad, Hunter heads to San Diego to visit Dee Dee, who’s working with juvenile offenders and planning to marry mayoral candidate Roger Prescott (Sam Hennings).
“As the story opens, Dee Dee’s doing swell,” says Kramer, looking even prettier without Dee Dee’s ’80s-style big hair and thick makeup. “Rick comes down to an engagement party. By virtue of a break-in at Dee Dee and Roger’s home, where there’s an accidental killing of one of the intruders by her fiance, there’s a homicide investigation.
“Rick gets involved, and it starts to be revealed that her fiance is not who she thought he was.”
If the movies succeed, they could lead to more films or even a one-hour series. “America, I believe,” Dryer says, “wants to see people solving problems and understanding what is right and wrong, what is moral and what is immoral, what is decent and what is indecent.”
