"The Fugitive" TV show from the '60s, starring David Janssen, is my all-time favorite TV show*. It was about a doctor, falsely accused of murdering his wife, who travels the country running "from the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture" while at the same time trying to find the REAL killer, an elusive one-armed man. He was CHASING while BEING chased, you see...a tension in the PLOT that was reflected so well by Janssen's tense acting skills.
Many only know of "The Fugitive" because of the excellent 1993 movie starring Harrison Ford, but the original TV show hit it big three decades BEFORE that. And just as the MOVIE can never be improved on, neither can the TV SHOW (though there was a short-lived attempt in 2000-2001, with Tim Daly as Dr. Richard Kimble, to do just that. It failed.)
I've been thinking about this show a lot because I'm officially becoming a SENIOR this coming Wednesday, age 65, and that weekly show was one of the highlights of my painful youth. I even wrote, and starred in, a "play" based on The Fugitive when I was in school, at around age 9!! I related to the character because I was "running" from my cruel step-father while trying to "find" my father, who left us. I felt that TENSION which Janssen conveyed. Also, the day AFTER my birthday this week, it will be 40 years since Janssen dropped dead of a heart attack at age 48, supposedly only a day after getting a physical which found him to be in good health. It's not something you forget, that's for sure, if you were a boyhood fan of his show.
THIS SHOW CAN NEVER BE REPLICATED TODAY, and it's not just because there'll never be another David Janssen, so perfectly suited for the role. For one thing, in the 60s, The Fugitive could travel the country freely, getting odd job after odd job to support himself though he had to constantly fake new IDs and references. In the year 2020, with computerized background checks, security cameras everywhere, etc., they could never remake the show with Dr. Kimble having that amazing flexibility. The Tim Daly remake died out in spring of 2001, before 9-11-'01, but if it had been renewed for a second season it would have been quickly cancelled after the terrorist attacks once the Dept. of Homeland Security had been created. America is simply NOT as free since 9-11 as we were in the 1960s, and again, that takes away Kimble's ability to travel freely across the U.S. like he did long ago.
Also, The Fugitive can never be replicated today because of the way TV shows are generally "dropped" today, in entire "seasons," all at once. "Marathons" of "The Fugitive" don't work well because all of the plots are basically the same: Kimble finds new identity / someone figures out who he is / he risks capture to try to help people in need / and then someone (usually a woman) helps HIM and he escapes. A friend of mine once said he hated the show when it aired in the 1960s because "he always got away," Lol!! But it WORKED in the 1960s because people couldn't RECORD the show or BINGEWATCH it, they had to watch one episode at a clip, once a week, and so it didn't get "old" as it would if you could watch episodes back-to-back. But now that technology ALLOWS us to watch back-to-back, it'll never GO back and that would kill the pacing of a remake. People would see quickly that, up until the good doctor CAUGHT the one-armed man, it was the same plot reworked over and over in just about every episode.
And if they tried to remake "The Fugitive " today they'd feel they had to put coarse language and sex scenes in it, things which were never heard or shown when the show aired in the '60s. Kimble, who was basically a GOOD doctor, would argue FOR abortion, not AGAINST it (like he did in one of the 1960s episodes) if Hollywood remade the series again. The background music would probably be RAP instead of that lovely ORCHESTRA. And, they'd probably make Kimble GAY and make THAT the reason he argued with his wife....(NOT the fact that they couldn't have KIDS, a la the original series.)
Maybe that's why I have all of the show's DVDs and rewatch them when I can, even though the first three seasons were in black-and-white. It's nice to remember an America that seems INNOCENT and UNCOMPLICATED (relatively speaking) compared to what we have today!!
* "Get Smart" is my favorite sitcom and "The Fugitive" just barely beats out "The Rockford Files" as my all-time favorite SHOW.
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