T. J. Hooker

The series was created by Rick Husky who had also worked on The Rookies for Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. The series was originally to be a reworking of that former cop show, this time called The Protectors. After the pilot, it was decided to focus the series on William Shatner's character and retitle it T. J. Hooker. The series initially set out to give a more "hands on", procedure-based view of police work than some of the more stylized cop shows of the 1970s and 1980s, evident in the very early episodes.

The LCPD Academy scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles Police Department Academy in Elysian Park. Though the series itself was produced in Burbank and filmed in the Los Angeles area, the setting was not disclosed throughout the show's entire run.

Hooker and Romano's radio call sign for their "black and white" was "4-Adam-30", and radio calls were very similar to those of Los Angeles Police Department, using three bursts of a 900 Hz tone, using LAPD-type radio codes, and the officers acknowledging with roger.

In the first, second and up to the fourth episode of the third season, Hooker drove a '77-'78 Dodge Monaco police package, but afterwards he started driving a '79-'81 Dodge St. Regis, usually powered by the much more anemic 318 or 360 Cid V8 as opposed to the 440 Cid V8 Monaco. By the fourth season, when Hooker and his team needed an unmarked cruiser, they usually rolled around in a '82-'83 light blue Dodge Diplomat or a '77-'78 burgundy red Dodge Monaco. Hooker's personal car for the duration of the series was a '74 blue Ford Torino sedan. Romano's car was a gold Datsun 280Z and Corrigan's ride was a silver and red Jeep CJ-5.

T. J. Hooker was canceled by ABC in the summer of 1985 (the final episode was a proposed reworking of the series set in Chicago) but the series survived when CBS picked up the show and produced new episodes (still produced in Los Angeles) and one two-hour TV movie titled "Blood Sport".[2] The new episodes were shown later at night as the first portion of the network's CBS Late Night program block, with each episode's runtime extended to 70 minutes (or one hour and ten minutes) to allow CBS affiliates time for increased availability for advertisements.[3] The TV movie and the penultimate episode were both aired by CBS on May 21, 1986, with the finale one week later on May 28, 1986. The season was produced on a much smaller budget and reused action sequences from the previous seasons.

Starting in 2005, the A&E Network re-broadcast the entire series, running one episode per weekday at 4:00 a.m. It is also available in a shortened format on The Minisode Network[4] and full length episodes are available on Crackle. The Universal HD Channel started airing episodes in September 2010. On October 9, 2010, the Sleuth network began a 24-hour T. J. Hooker marathon. In 2023, the MeTV+ network began airing the program.

In the United Kingdom, the show was originally broadcast by ITV starting in April 1983. Most regions broadcast episodes at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday evenings, later in a similar Friday evening slot. Some regions gave it a slot on a different day (southern region TVS, for example, typically ran it on Tuesday evenings), and not all regions broadcast the entire series, with some areas not progressing beyond the third or fourth seasons. Some regions also broadcast the later episodes - particularly those concerning a more adult or violent nature - as part of the night-time line-up during the advent of 24-hour broadcasting in the later 1980s. In 2002, Five ran the whole series through, in a weekday 11:00 a.m. slot. This run included every episode, although some were edited for content for the daytime slot. In 2009, digital channel Quest aired the series on a daily basis,[5] although they only hold the rights to show the first three seasons. On 11 November 2019, series 1 began broadcasting on Sony Channel.

In Italy, the series started to air in 1983 on Canale 5. After his first run, it was often repeated through the years: first on Italia 1 (late afternoon or in the morning ) and then on Rete 4 (in the morning) and Fox Retro (in the evening). Recently, METOO a Sister station of WCIU-TV in Chicago began airing the show in a 2:00 p.m. timeslot.

In Japan, the series has been playing 1985 – 1988 on Nippon TV.

In Australia, the series has been playing reruns on the 7 Networks 3rd channel 7mate from 2012 to 2016.

In New Zealand, the series is being screened for the first time, as from May 13, 2013, on Sky Television's Jones! channel.

In September 2014, FamilyNet cable channel began carrying the series, which was remastered in the mid-2000s with a high definition version that originally aired on Universal HD. On June 26, 2017 FETV began airing the series weeknights at 10:00 p.m.

As of 2019, the show has been re-run in the UK and Ireland by Sony Channel.

Currently, in the U.S., the show airs late evenings on FETV.

Beginning on October 1, 2010, the series was rebroadcast on Universal HD to overwhelming success, quickly becoming one of the most successful series on the channel although the channel did not yet subscribe to Nielsen ratings. Due to the high ratings, the original film elements were re-mastered for high definition, and the program was cropped to a 1.78 aspect ratio to fill the screens of modern televisions.