Hunter: The Beautiful & The Dead (1986)

Source:Apple TV- actress Persis Khambatta as Dhari Ziad.

"Hunter and McCall are called to investigate the car bombing of a Middle-Eastern consulate member for which a student terrorist group claims responsibility." 

From IMDB

"Hunter and McCall are called to investigate the car bombing of a Middle-Eastern consulate member for which a student terrorist group claims responsibility." 

Source:YouTube- actress Persis Khambatta as Dhari Ziad.

From YouTube

"When a dead girl disappears from Hunter's living room, Hunter and McCall follow a trail of intrigue, adultery and murder." 

Source:IMDB- actress Katherine Justice plays Shirley Humphreys in this episode.

From IMDB

In early 2021, perhaps earlier than that, Charge started putting the old Hunter episodes on their network. And they did that for about a year or so. And then GetTV picked up the TV series as well about 1-2 years later and are stilling showing Hunter on the weekends.

I'm a Gen-Xer and growing up in the 1980s, this was 1 of my favorite TV shows, especially before my family got cable in the late 80s. And it's 1 of the my favorite cop shows as well. So I'm watching all these Hunter reruns mostly on the weekends. And a few episodes really stand out with me to the point I personally recoded a lot of them on my DVR. 2 episodes in particular are 62 Hours of Terror and The Beautiful and The Dead, both from season 2 and both from 1986. 

If you are familiar with Fred Dryer (who played LAPD Detective Sergeant Rick Hunter) on the Hunter TV series, you know that before he got into acting in the 1980s, he was an All Pro defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL in the 1970s. 

So we're talking about a 6'6 240-245 pound man, all muscle, who plays an LAPD detective sergeant and lead investigator on all his cases. But that's just from the outside. He's also a very funny man, who always has a great wisecrack ready to go, or some sarcastic, physical comedy, ready to show as well. And they added his comedic humor, with Stephanie Kramer's who played Sergeant Hunter's partner on this show. (Detective Sergeant DeDee McCall) And she's an excellent comedic actress herself. 

If you are familiar with this TV series, it's basically an action/comedy, that's advertised as police detective show. The detectives are very funny, a lot of the guest actors are also very funny. The storylines and writing and funny as well. But it's also a serious cop show about how two senior, LAPD detectives, solve cases together, but who have a lot of fun with each other while they're doing that. 

The two Hunter episodes that this is about, is what I'm talking about. But there's more to it than that. The fact that LAPD would be investigating Middle Eastern terrorists, as well as officials who were involved in these terrorist acts, but then the fact that a woman (played by Persis Khambatta) from the Baraqi embassy (a made up country) American boyfriend (played by Rod Arrantis) who is really the terrorist here, because this woman really wants to kill her husband whose is cheating on her, (even though she's doing the exact same thing to him) makes this episode even more fascinating to me. 

But then this woman is so cute and beautiful, (reminds me of actress Anne-Marie Johnson) you would think she would be the last person who is behind this terrorist plot, but she's plays the innocent woman so beautifully (in more ways than 1) that you would have to be a great detective like Rick Hunter to figure this out. But it's her boyfriend Harry Malone (played by Rod Arrantis) who gives Sergeant's Hunter and McCall the giveaway to this plot by volunteering that Dhari Ziad (played by Persis Khambatta) is 1 of his clients that he was protecting. Puts Hunter and McCall on to him and that's how they figure this case out. 

As far as The Beautiful and The Dead, it's a great Cold War, intelligence/detective story. You have a Russian citizen Leo Zukoff (played by Kabir Bedi) who is really a Russian intelligence officer, pretending to be a small businessman in Los Angeles. But what he's really doing is knocking off people who get in his way and threaten to exposed himself for what he is, which is a Russian intelligence officer and mobster. Hunter and McCall figure that out pretty quickly. But it takes them most of this 2-part episode to figure this out. 

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