Based on a six-page format, inspired by Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, by writer-producer (and Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip creator) Roy Huggins, ABC brought in executive producer Quinn Martin to supervise the project. He in turn brought on board line producer Alan Armer (who went on to oversee 90 episodes) and hired David Janssen to play the title character. While Huggins's original outline saw the wrongly convicted character behave like an oddball, since society was treating him like one anyway, Martin's concept of the character was something less bizarre: a put-upon but basically decent person. At first, however, ABC executives worried that perhaps viewers would feel the only honorable thing for Kimble to do would be to tum himself in. Martin's production expertise, evidenced in the footage the executives viewed, changed their minds. In the pilot episode, "Fear in a Desert City," the audience was introduced to the story of Dr. Richard Kimble, arriving home in the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, to witness a one-armed man running from his house, leaving behind Kimble's murdered wife. In the same episode, "blind justice" saw fit to charge Kimble himself with the murder and sentence him to death. This narrative immediately aroused viewer sympathy and interest. That the train en route to the prison where Kimble was to be executed was accidentally derailed, rendering his captor Lieutenant Philip Gerard unconscious and thus allowing Kimble to escape, propelled the hero into a "willed irresponsibility without a concomitant sense of guilt," as Roy Huggins put it. In other words, the (mid-1960s) TV viewer felt perfectly at ease with this particular "outlaw" because what was happening was not his fault.

     Not unlike the hero of the western, which U.S. television had embraced since the 1950s and with which it still had something of an infatuation, Kimble had the appeal of the rootless wanderer whose commitments to jobs, women, or society were temporary, yet who at the same time deserved the viewer's sympathy as something of a tragic figure. The series' and the introspective character's success rested largely with the appeal of actor David Janssen's intense portrayal (Janssen's first television hit had been as the lead in the slick Richard Diamond, Private Detective series of the late 1950s). The drama of the stories derived not so much from the transient occupations of the fleeing hero (such as soil mender in Hank Searls's "Never Wave Good-bye" or dog handler in Harry Kronman's "Bloodline") but from the dilemma of the Kimble character himself, something Janssen was able to convey with an almost nervous charm.

     The other principal members of the cast were Canadian actor Barry Morse as the relentless, Javert-like Lieutenant Gerard, who only appeared in about one out of four stories but who seemed always ominously present; Jacqueline Scott as Kimble's sister, Donna Taft; Diane Brewster as Kimble's wife, Helen (in occasional flashbacks); and the burly Bill Raisch as the elusive one-armed man, Fred Johnson. Raisch, who had lost his right arm during World War II but nevertheless went on to become a stand-in for Burt Lancaster, may have been the prime motivation for Kimble to stay one step ahead of the law, but his character was rarely seen on-screen; during the first two years of production, Raisch worked on the program only four days.

     Using the general format of an anthology show, but with continuing characters (in the manner of the contemporary Herbert Leonard series Naked City and Route 66), the producers, writers, and directors were given license to deal with characters, settings, and stories not usually associated with what was in essence a simple man-on-the-run theme. Under various non­ descript aliases (but most frequently as "Jim"), Kimble traversed the United States in pursuit of the one-armed man, and along the way became involved with ordinary people who were usually at an emotional crossroads in their lives. The opportunities for some magnificent guest performances as well as interesting locations were immense (in the early years of production, the crew spent six days on each episode with about three of those days on location): Sandy Dennis in Alain Caillou and Harry Kronman's "The Other Side of the Mountain" (West Virginia), Jack Klugman in Peter Germano and Kronman's ''Terror at High Point" (Salt Lake City, Utah), Eileen Heckart in Al C. Ward's "Angels Travel on Lonely Roads," parts one and two (Revenna, Nevada, and Sacramento, California), Jack Weston in Robert Pirosh's "Fatso" (Louisville, Kentucky). The series also featured a number of interesting directors, including Ida Lupino, Laslo Benedek, Walter Grauman, Robert Butler, Richard Donner, Mark Rydell, Gerd Oswald, and Joseph Sargent; Barry Morse even had an opportunity to direct an episode.

     Then, on Tuesday, August 29, I967, "the running stopped.'" So declared actor William Conrad in his final Fugitive narration after four years of keeping viewers tuned in to Kimble's circumstances and thoughts. By the fourth year of production, Janssen was physically and emotionally exhausted. When ABC, which had grossed an estimated $30 million on the series, suggested a fifth year, Janssen declined the offer and Quinn Martin, in a move quite unorthodox to series television, decided to bring Kimble's story to a conclusion. The definitive two-part episode, "The Judgment," written by George Eckstein and Michael Zagar, and directed by Don Medford, saw Kimble track the one-armed man to an amusement park in Santa Monica, California, wherein a climactic fight, with Kimble about to be killed, the real murderer is shot down by Gerard. The final episode pulled a Nielsen score of 45.9. Now, with Kimble exonerated, both he and Gerard were free to pursue their own paths. Janssen, too, continued his own career. After The Fugitive he starred in O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971-72) and Harry O (1974-76).

     While other series with similar themes followed (Run for Your Life; the comedy Run, Buddy, Run), it is to The Fugitive's credit that it remains one of the more fondly remembered drama series of the I960s. Harrison Ford starred as an energetic Kimble in Warner Brothers' successful 1993 feature remake, The Fugitive, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard. Jones was re­ called for the unfortunate film sequel-of-sorts, U.S. Marshals (1998), reprising his character Chief Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard. The only actual connection of this movie to the original television series was the statement "based on characters created by Roy Hug­ gins" in the film's credits. Two years later, in October 2000, CBS premiered a remake of The Fugitive series. Warner Brothers Television chose the 1993 movie as the source, rather than the 1960s drama original, and the resulting program shared little more than the mo­tions of the original premise, lacking a comparably deep exploration of the characters. The new version lasted only one season.