Call it what you like, Red baiting, Communist fearing mania or whatever (maybe a little bit of Mc Cartheyism),who cares. The show, however, under the glib acting talents of star Barry Nelson was very watchable and, most times, quite enjoyable - for the time.
Nelson portrayed wealthy man about town (then referred to as a playboy), Bart Adams, a carefree, booze loving womanizer who had a secret side. Adams was a freelance Communist hunter - hence the show's title, "The Hunter."
Through some sort of secret network (never fully explained in the series) he was able to ferret out agents for the Russian government working inside the U.S.A. And at times, the cheaply made show had Adams working, clandestinely, inside a Communist country.
Like with the Leslie Charteris character, Simon Templer (The Saint), Adams character had a signal tune that was whistled in the beginning credits of the show and after his triumphant success - even though you never saw him at the end - which was meant to state that he'd escaped his enemies.
That tune was "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, brother John, brother John...." - followed by what was then referred to as a 'wolf whistle.' In its third season, for whatever reasons, Barry Nelson was either dropped from the show or left it voluntarily. He was replaced by actor Keith Larson and the show lost something vital. It ended at the beginning of that third season.
