Callan (TV series) is run by Colonel Hunter. ("Hunter" is a pseudonym for the current Section Chief, like the C of SIS.) The Section removes those who pose a danger to the "innocent" by persuasion, blackmail, extortion or death. David Callan had been the Section's top operator but he had become too curious about his targets and the rationale for their removal. The Section considered him vulnerable, volatile and dangerous and had laid him off to a dead-end book-keeping job for an ungrateful employer. ABC then commissioned a series of six episodes in 1967. In the first episode Callan rejoins the section in
Callan (TV series) a group of muggers and his realisation that killing is all he is good at doing. (This plot point also exists in "A Magnum for Schneider" and the 1974 "Callan" film.) McCall and Callan also share eclectic leisure interests away from their work. Another TV series made at the end of the 1990s, "La Femme Nikita" was inspired by the French film of the same name (not the remakes) and starring Peta Wilson as Nikita. Framed for murder and forced into joining Section One, she displays all of the reluctance to kill shown by Callan, and a need to know