Selleck played the role of Thomas Magnum in 1980 after filming six other TV pilots that were never sold. Magnum was a former U.S. Navy Officer, a veteran of a Special Operations unit, "SEAL" in the Vietnam War, and later a member of the "Naval Intelligence Agency" (a fictional version of the Office of Naval Intelligence), who had resigned his commission with the Navy to become a private investigator living in Hawaii. The show would go on for eight seasons and 163 episodes until 1988, winning him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1984.