What surprises about this show is how good it makes melodrama seem.
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Though series creator Roy Huggins denied it, "The Fugitive" was commonly thought to have been based on the real-life Sam Sheppard murder case, in which a physician who claimed an intruder had murdered his pregnant wife was himself convicted and served time in prison, then was released after a Supreme Court decision reversed the decision.
In this one-hour drama from QM Productions--the same folks who gave us "The Untouchables"--the premise is the same, week after week. Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) was falsely accused and convicted of the murder of his wife, but spared incarceration when the train carrying him to prison derailed. Week after week the escapee assumed a new identity, drifted into a new town or region, interacted with people who had troubles of their own, and, like a dramatic deus ex machina, ended up helping people in almost every episode. That's because he's a doctor and a decent guy, and his altruism is partly the cause of tension in every episode. The nice guy in him puts the convicted felon at risk of being caught and sent back to prison.
But the variety is endless and the quality of acting and writing is awfully good, though tonally the show feels melodramatic by today's standards. For the record, a true melodrama has three defining characteristics: it ignores the laws of cause and effect, exaggerates emotion, and has a plot that's driven by action rather than character. In this series, every effect seems to have a logical cause, and the plots are driven by both character and circumstance. Where the melodrama seeps in is that the emotions are manipulated largely through lingering shots and emphatic music. But his show still holds as quality drama--stagey, rather than cinematic, but dramatic nonetheless. The pace is a little slower, too, but the acting is so wonderful that the whole black-and-white experience starts to remind you of some of the early Paul Newman work, like "The Hustler" and "Hud." really holds your interest. Even simple reaction shots that seem perfectly awful in a soap opera are instead just perfect in this compelling series.
The star is David Janssen, who's believably twitchy and flinchy and looking over his shoulder in every episode for an Indiana cop named Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), who's made it his mission in life to recapture Kimble. But Kimble himself is after a one-armed man he saw near his house on the night he found his murdered wife--a man whom he's convinced can clear his name, and a man who turns up in one episode this season.
The tension every week may have revolved around Kimble's close brushes with discovery and the law, but the drama and real interest centered on the guest stars' problems that the good doctor couldn't keep himself from trying to solve. Huggins said that he had in mind a contemporary Western when he wrote the pilot, and I can certainly see it. Kimble drifts into town, like Shane or any number of other Western heroes with a mysterious side or a shady past, and he forms tenuous relationships, helps people, then moves on. William Conrad (TV's "Cannon") does a voiceover narration at the beginning and end of every episode which are probably the cheesiest moments. And the drama is broken up into four acts and an epilogue. But in the span of that hour (less, of course, without commercials) you really got a sense of human lives in crises large and small.
Janssen received several Emmy nominations for his work, including this second season. And while the show finished its first year at #28 in the Nielsen ratings, the second season jumped all the way to #5--the highest rated drama apart from "Bonanza," the #1-watched show in America. By the time the fourth season came around and the two-part finale had everyone wondering if Kimble would finally catch up with the one-armed man, more people tuned in than at any other time previously in TV history. Because it was one of the top dramas of its time, "The Fugitive" predictably attracted some quality actors as weekly guests.
Just as "The Untouchables" was released in split-season installments, so is "The Fugitive," and that's bound to raise the hackles on more than a few collectors. But at least the 15 episodes in this Season 2 Volume 1 collection were transferred to four single-sided discs and housed in a standard-size keep case with "pages." Here's a rundown:
1) "Man in a Chariot." Make that a chariot of fire, because the law professor who's been confined to a wheelchair because of an accident that also cost him his wife is angry and embittered. Kimble sees the old guy on TV boasting that he could get people like Kimble acquitted or at least a "hung jury," and Kimble contacts him. The professor (Ed Begley) stages a mock trial to test the feasibility, and predictably it draws the attention of the media . . . and Lt. Gerard, who flies into town.
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