T. J. Hooker was created by Rick Husky as a reworking of The Rookies, a show he had previously worked on for producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.

The series was originally titled The Protectors, but after the pilot it was decided to focus on the star and rename the show T. J. Hooker.

The fictional Lake City Police Academy exteriors were filmed at the real Los Angeles Police Academy at Elysian Park, even though the show's setting was never actually named on screen.

The series was produced in Burbank and filmed throughout the greater Los Angeles area, standing in for the fictional Lake City.

During the gap between ABC's cancellation and CBS picking up the show, actor Adrian Zmed left to host Dance Fever, which is why his character was largely absent for the final season, leaving Hooker to work mostly with Sheridan and Corrigan.

The role of Hooker's ex-wife Fran was first played by Lee Bryant before being recast with Leigh Christian.

The police vehicles changed over the run of the show: Hooker drove a 1977-78 Dodge Monaco early on before switching to a 1979-81 Dodge St. Regis, while his personal car throughout the series was a 1974 blue Ford Torino sedan.

The abbreviated first season ranked 28th in the Nielsen ratings, but subsequent seasons never reached that level of popularity.

For its final season, the show moved from ABC primetime to a late-night CBS slot, where the low-budget new episodes reused action sequences from earlier seasons.

The final ABC episode had proposed reworking the series' setting to Chicago before CBS instead picked it up and produced 17 new episodes in Los Angeles plus a TV movie filmed in Hawaii called "Blood Sport".