Claim: Michael Douglas left The Streets of San Francisco.

The Streets of San Francisco is a 1970s television crime drama filmed on location in San Francisco , California , and produced by Quinn Martin Productions , with the first season produced in association with Warner Bros. . Television -LRB- QM produced the show on its own for the remainder of its run -RRB- .   It starred Karl Malden and Michael Douglas as two detectives in San Francisco . The show ran for five seasons , between 1972 and 1977 on ABC , amassing a total of 119 60-minute episodes .   The series started with a pilot movie of the same title -LRB- based on the detective novel Poor , Poor Ophelia by Carolyn Weston -RRB- a week before the series debuted . Edward Hume , who wrote the teleplay for the pilot , was credited as having developed the series based on characters in Weston 's novel . The pilot featured guest stars Robert Wagner , Tom Bosley and Kim Darby . Douglas left the series at the start of its final season and was replaced by Richard Hatch .