The Fugitive

'The Fugitive' is a classic dramatic series I watch whenever I have an opportunity. David Janssen was (and still is) the best Dr. Richard Kimble (sorry Mr. Ford and Daly!). Barry Morse was equally effective as Lt. Philip Gerard, the man obsessed with capturing our hero. This classic lasted four years and 120 episodes. (The real reason I watch this show is because some of its elements would be later used in 'The Incredible Hulk,' which is my all-time favorite episodic TV series.)

Of course, the character of Richard Kimble was loosely inspired by Dr. Sam Sheppard. The major difference was that while Dr. Richard Kimble spent four years chasing the real killer (a one-armed man) of his wife Helen, Dr. Sheppard spent ten years in jail for the 1954 murder of his wife Marilyn.

It might be interesting to note that when Dr. Sheppard was acquitted in a second trial in November of 1966, 'The Fugitive,' which was then in the middle of its fourth season, began to slip in the ratings. For this reason, the producers were smart not to wait for the ax to fall and risk having the series cancelled without doing a finale.

"The Judgment," the two-hour series finale, aired in the summer of 1967. After four years of chasing and being chased, Kimble finally catches up with Fred Johnson, the one-armed man, who admits to having been Helen's real killer. He is then shot and killed by Lt. Gerard, who saves Kimble in the process.

While the finale was weak in some respects, it was generally a fitting conclusion to the 'Fugitive' series. Of course, it was also one of the highest rated TV finales of all-time.

This is one of the greatest TV series of all time, why is it not available on DVD? and I'm not talking about bootleg VHS copies from Ebay for $300.00.

An outstanding classic television series that needs to be presented in it's entirety in a DVD set. The movie version was a bunch of bloated, Hollywood tripe all to typical of whats been put out today.

Painstaking effort has been made to present DVD material of such crap as Full House, Saved by the Bell, etc, etc. I'll bet we'll see Love Boat come out next. Why no Fugitive?

This is absolutely unacceptable.

I was not alive yet when the show was in its original run. When I became a teenager, I happened to be flipping through the channels one late night and I stumbled across a rerun of "The Fugitive". I was hooked immediately.

I idea behind watching any TV program or movie is to provoke raw emotion from the viewer. Whenever I watch "The Fugitive", my heart actually beats faster. I always felt nervous, merry due to Kimble triumphing, scared, etc. No other program I have ever watched has given me such great feelings.

The show had an excellent premise (we all know it). The character development is the best of the best. Kimble, we saw his weaknesses, did not deserve the injustice that was brought to him. His strengths always kept him one step ahead of Gerard. Gerard, he was the epitome of a man possessed. Great characters and a great story.

Granted, the show has some continuity problems. But those things were overshadowed by an excellent product.

Most other drama on TV today is sappy and weak compared to this.

"The Fugitive" is what a real dram is supposed to be!!

With each passing decade, we seem to descend further into lower and lower literary standards in prose, film, everything. Jumping back thirty or forty years, we see that even television could be deep at times. This and many other shows of the first twenty years or so of TV actually had believable premises, developed characters and strong supporting roles as foil to the lead (Barry Morse's lawman here). The good news is that cable will continue to unearth gems from the past such as "Fugitive" due to sheer need of programming.

It was called "the most repulsive concept ever for television" when Roy Huggins pitched it to ABC in 1960, until Leonard Goldenson of ABC called it the best idea he'd ever heard.

Such summarizes the huge effort Roy Huggins invested to get The Fugitive to television. Teaming with producer Quinn Martin, Huggins' concept was made flesh with the casting of David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble and British-born Canadian Barry Morse as his nemesis, Lt. Philip Gerard. Huggins and Martin worked to make a compelling weekly drama via superb scripts, top-notch guest casts, and enticing music by Peter Rugolo, and succeeded perhaps more than they ever dared to hope.

The Fugitive remains compelling television 40 years later. Janssen and Morse imbue tremendous sympathy into their roles and make their characters so compelling that audiences even went too far, assailing Morse by saying, "You dumb cop, don't you realize he's innocent?" It even extended to the one-armed vagrant who was key to the drama, played by stuntman Bill Raisch, who in one incident was even picked up by the real LAPD because they thought he was "wanted for something," before they realized he was just an actor.

If The Fugitive had a drawback, it was because it worked too well - it is emotionally draining watching the show because the sympathy enticed for the characters is so great that seeing them suffer is painful, such as in the two-part episode "Never Wave Goodbye" - the audience is put through the emotional wringer every bit as much as Kimble, Gerard, and the story's supporting players (in this case played by Susan Oliver, Will Kuliva, Robert Duvall, and Lee Phillips).

The series was shot in black and white in its first three seasons, but for the fourth season came the replacement of producer Alan Armer with Wilton Schiller and the switch to color. The quality of the series remained high, but it is a measure of the show's quality that early fourth-season episodes are considered disappointing, and yet are still excellent stories with genuine emotional pull. The fourth-season settled down when writer-producer George Eckstein was brought in early on to help out Schiller, and it helped bring about some of the series' best moments, notably in the episode "The Ivy Maze," where for the first time in the series, all three protagonists (Kimble, Gerard, and Fred Johnson, the one-armed man) confront each other.

The performances and all else within made The Fugitive TV's most compelling drama, then and forever.