AllMovie

After a 1981 false-start pilot film featuring Kevin Dobson, a new TV series based on Mickey Spillane's fascistic p.i. Mike Hammer was heralded with the 1983 TV pilot Murder Me, Murder You. This time Stacy Keach steps into Mike Hammer's gumshoes, as Mike is hired to protect grand jury witness Michelle Phillips. It so happens that Hammer and the witness were once lovers, but what Mike doesn't know (until halfway through the film) is that he is the father of Michelle's 19-year-old daughter. When the lovely witness mysteriously drops dead in court, Hammer is compelled to seek out the daughter he has never met--before the bad guys find her first. While the plot convolutions are more in the tradition of Ross MacDonald than Mickey Spillane, Murder Me, Murder You star Stacy Keach may well stand the test of time as the definitive Mike Hammer. He continued the role into a brief TV series, though ex-"Charlie's Angel" Tanya Roberts, cast in Murder Me, Murder You as Mike's curvaceous secretary Velda, would be replaced in the series by Lindsay Bloom.