The Fugitive Information

The Fugitive is an American drama series created by Roy Huggins and produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen stars as Richard Kimble, a doctor who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death penalty. En route to death row, Kimble's train derails and crashes, allowing him to escape and begin a cross-country search for the real killer, a "one-armed man" (played by Bill Raisch). At the same time, Dr. Kimble is hounded by the authorities, most notably dogged by Police Lieutenant Philip Gerard (Barry Morse).

The Fugitive aired for four seasons, and a total of 120 51-minute episodes were produced. The first three seasons were filmed in black and white; the final season was in color. As of October 2012, The Fugitive is broadcast weekly on Me-TV.

In 2002, The Fugitive was ranked No. 36 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

Premise

The series premise was set up in the opening narration, but the full details about the crime were not offered in the pilot episode, which started with Kimble having been on the run for six months. In the series' first season, the premise (heard over footage of Kimble handcuffed to Gerard on a train) was summarized in the opening title sequence of the pilot episode as follows:

This title sequence was shortened for the remainder of the first season as follows:

The main title narration, as read by William Conrad, was changed for the first episode of the second season on through the last episode of the series:

It was not until episode 14, "The Girl from Little Egypt", that viewers were offered the full details of Richard Kimble's plight. A series of flashbacks reveals the fateful night of Helen Kimble's death, and for the first time offers a glimpse of the "one-armed man".

Inspirations and influence

The series was conceived by Roy Huggins and produced by Quinn Martin. It is popularly believed that the series was based in part on the real-life story of Sam Sheppard, an Ohio doctor accused of murdering his wife. Although convicted and imprisoned, Sheppard claimed that his wife had been murdered by a "bushy-haired man." Sheppard's brothers hired F. Lee Bailey to appeal the conviction. Bailey defended Sheppard and won an acquittal in the second trial. Huggins denied basing the series on Sheppard, though the show's film editor, Ken Wilhoit, was married to Susan Hayes, who had had an intimate relationship with Sheppard prior to the murder and testified during the first trial in 1954.

The plot device of an innocent man on the run from the police for a murder he did not commit while simultaneously pursuing the real killer was a popular one with audiences. It had its antecedents in the Alfred Hitchcock movies The 39 Steps, Saboteur and North by Northwest. The theme of a doctor in hiding for committing a major crime had also been depicted by James Stewart as the mysterious Buttons the Clown in The Greatest Show on Earth. Writer David Goodis claimed the series was inspired by his 1946 novel Dark Passage, about a man who escapes from prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing his wife. Goodis' litigation over the issue continued for some time after his 1967 death.

It has also been speculated that another part of the plot device of a fugitive living a life on the run from the authorties was loosely inspired by the French novel Les Misérables which the Richard Kimble character was inspired by Jean Valjean, an ex-convict living a life as a fugitive and having numerous aliases as well as helping people around him. The character of Lt. Gerard, whom hounds Kimble throughtout the series, is also loosely inspired by a character from the same novel, a relentless police inspector named Lieutenant Javert, who is obsessed with capturing the fugitive.

While shows like Route 66 had employed the same anthology-like premise of wanderers finding adventure in each new place they came to, The Fugitive answered two questions that had bedeviled many similar series: "Why doesn't the protagonist settle down somewhere?" and "Why is the protagonist trying to solve these problems himself instead of calling in the police?" Casting a doctor as the protagonist also provided the series a wider "range of entry" into local stories, as Kimble's medical knowledge would allow him alone to recognize essential elements of the episode (e.g. subtle medical symptoms or an abused medicine) and the commonplace doctor's ethic (e.g. to provide aid in emergencies) would naturally lead him into dangerous situations. Several television series have imitated the formula, with the twists being mostly in the nature of the fugitives: a German Shepherd dog (Run, Joe, Run, 1974); a scientist with a monstrous alter ego (The Incredible Hulk, 1978); a group of ex-US Army Special Forces accused of a war crime they committed under orders (The A-Team, 1983); a husband and wife (Hot Pursuit, 1984); a young man afflicted with lycanthropy (Werewolf, 1987) and a reinstated detective (Life, 2007).

In its debut season, The Fugitive was the 28th highest rated show in the US (with a 21.7 Rating), and it jumped to 5th in its second season (27.9). It fell out of the top 30 during the last two seasons, but the show's finale in 1967, in which Dr. Kimble's fate was shown, held the record at that time for the highest share of American homes with television sets to watch the finale of a series, 72%.

The show also came away with other honors. In 1965, Alan Armer, the producer and head writer of the series, received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his work. And in a 1993 ranking, TV Guide named The Fugitive the best dramatic series of the 1960s.

Characters

Dr. Richard Kimble

The series' lead, and the only character seen in all 120 episodes, was Dr. Richard David Kimble (Janssen).

Though Kimble was a respected pediatrician in the fictional small town of Stafford, Indiana, it was generally known that he and his wife Helen had been having arguments prior to her death. Helen's pregnancy had ended in a stillborn birth of a son, and surgery to save her life had also rendered her infertile. The couple was devastated, but Helen refused to consider adopting children as Richard wanted. The night of Helen's murder, the Kimbles were heard arguing heatedly over this topic by their neighbors. Richard later went out for a drive to cool off; as he was returning home, he nearly struck with his car a one-armed man who was fleeing from the house. Richard then found that Helen had been killed. No one had seen or heard Richard go out for his drive, or seen him while he was out, and he was convicted of Helen's murder. This story was enlarged upon in a first-season episode titled "The Girl from Little Egypt".

After his escape from custody, Kimble moves from town to town, always trying to remain unobtrusive and unnoticed as he searches for the one-armed man while also trying to evade police capture. He usually adopts a nondescript alias and toils at low-paying menial jobs (i.e. those that required no ID or security checks) in order to survive. Though Kimble tries to keep a low profile, circumstances often conspire to place him in positions where he would be recognized or forced to risk capture in order to help a deserving person he has met in his travels.

Richard is unusually skilled and is usually able to perform well any job he takes. He also displays considerable prowess in hand-to-hand combat. In the episode "Nemesis", he distracts and then knocks out a forest ranger, then quickly unloads the man's rifle to ensure he cannot shoot him if pursued.

Lt. Philip Gerard

Kimble is pursued by the relentless police detective Lt. Philip Gerard (Morse), a formidably intelligent family man and dedicated public servant.

Morse portrayed Gerard as a man duty-bound to capture Kimble, but who also appeared to have some doubts as to his guilt. In one episode, when a woman witness remarks that Kimble killed his wife, Gerard simply replies, "The law says he did", with a tone of doubt in his voice; in the episode "Nemesis", the local sheriff (John Doucette) states, "You said he's a killer", to which Gerard sharply replies, "The jury said that!" However, in "Wife Killer" he states with certainty that the one-armed man does not exist and that Kimble is guilty.

Gerard's doubts are augmented after Kimble rescues Gerard in episodes such as "Never Wave Goodbye", "Corner of Hell", "Ill Wind", "The Evil Men Do", and "Stroke of Genius". "The Evil Men Do" in particular played on the respect that develops between the two men when Gerard is pursued by former Mob hitman Arthur Brame (James Daly), who is rescued from a runaway horse by Kimble; Kimble rescues Gerard from Brame. When Kimble escapes from Gerard, the lieutenant does not pursue Kimble, but instead goes after and kills Brame. In the epilogue, Gerard explains his decision to Brame's wife Sharon (Elizabeth Allen) by noting Arthur is a career killer while "Kimble, he's done the one murder he'll probably ever do". "Until I find him, and I will, he's no menace to anyone, but himself."

In "Nemesis", Kimble unintentionally kidnaps Gerard's young son Philip Junior (played by 12-year-old Kurt Russell). Though as concerned as any father should be, Gerard is confident that Kimble will not do his boy any real harm. After his experience with Kimble, Philip Junior questions whether or not he is guilty and his father openly admits that he could be wrong, though it does not change his duty.

There are parallels to be seen between Gerard's pursuit of Kimble and the pursuit of Jean Valjean by Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, though Javert never lets go of his obsession to follow the letter of the law and hunts down his fugitive, even killing himself when he could not reconcile his tenets with the mercy Valjean shows him. Gerard, on the other hand, was portrayed externally as a man like Javert, but internally as more of a thinking man who could balance justice and duty. According to some of those who worked on the show, these parallels were not coincidental. Stanford Whitmore, who wrote the pilot episode "Fear in a Desert City," says that he deliberately gave Kimble's nemesis a similar-sounding name to see if anyone would recognize the similarity between 'Gerard' and 'Javert'. One who recognized the similarity was Morse; he pointed out the connection to Quinn Martin, who admitted that The Fugitive was a "sort of modern rendition of the outline of Les Misérables." Morse accordingly went back to the Victor Hugo novel and studied the portrayal of Javert, to find ways to make the character more complex than the "conventional 'Hollywood dick'" Gerard had originally been conceived as. "I've always thought that we in the arts ... are all 'shoplifters'", Morse said. "Everybody, from Shakespeare onwards and downwards ... But once you've acknowledged that ... when you set out on a shoplifting expedition, you go always to Cartier's, and never to Woolworth's!"

One-armed man

A shadowy figure, the one-armed man (Bill Raisch) is seen fleeing Kimble's house by Kimble after the murder of Helen. In the series, not much is revealed about the man's personal life, and how or when he lost his right arm.

The one-armed man was rarely seen on The Fugitive, appearing in person in only ten episodes"?and also in a photograph in the episode "The Breaking of the Habit" with Eileen Heckart. Aside from a few ad libs, he also has no actual dialogue until the episodes in season four, as his character takes a more prominent part in the plotline. Aware that Kimble is after him, the one-armed man frequently tips the police off as to Kimble's whereabouts, most notably in "Nobody Loses All The Time" when he telephones his girlfriend (Barbara Baxley) at a hospital and orders her to call the police"?even though Kimble risked arrest to save her life.

Like Kimble, he used a variety of aliases while on the run"?in the episode "A Clean And Quiet Town", he is credited as "Steve Cramer", and in "The Ivy Maze", he poses as "Carl Stoker". He goes by the name "Fred Johnson" in several episodes, notably "Escape Into Black" and "Wife Killer", as well as the two-part series finale "The Judgement". He is also referred to as Johnson in "The Ivy Maze", and at one point Fritz Simpson (William Windom) addresses him as "Fred" (in that episode, Kimble, Gerard, and the one-armed man all appear in the same scene for the first time). However, when interrogated by Lt. Gerard in "The Judgement", he denies that Fred Johnson is his real name. Although Fred Johnson is generally regarded as his "real" identity, a case could be made for his actual name being "Gus Evans" "? as revealed in "The Judgement", that was the name the one-armed man used before he killed Helen Kimble, when he would presumably have had no need to adopt an alias.

Others

Kimble's murdered wife Helen was portrayed in flashbacks in several episodes by Diane Brewster. In the first such episode, "The Girl from Little Egypt", flashbacks illustrate the actual murder and the circumstances leading up to and surrounding it. Also seen very occasionally were Kimble's married sister, Donna Taft (Jacqueline Scott); his brother-in-law, Leonard Taft (played by several actors in different episodes, including Richard Anderson, James B. Sikking and Lin McCarthy); and Gerard's superior at the Stafford police department, Captain Carpenter (Paul Birch). Only the character of Richard Kimble is present onscreen in every episode; off-screen narrator William Conrad is also heard at the beginning and end of each episode (though not credited), while a different voice announces the title of the episode and the names of the episode's guest stars in the opening teaser. This announcer (an uncredited Dick Wesson) also says, "The Fugitive" aloud at the end of the closing credits leading in to studio sponsorships of the series ("'The Fugitive' has been brought to you by.....") Quinn Martin's previous show, The Untouchables, also contained both a narrator (Walter Winchell) and an announcer (Les Lampson).

Gerard appears in 37 episodes, and the one-armed man is seen in only ten episodes, though he appears in the opening credits beginning with the show's second season. He appeared only twice in the show's first season and one time each in the second and third seasons, but appeared in six fourth-season episodes, a reflection of new producer Wilton Schiller's desire to steer the show toward a more action-oriented direction.

The 120 episodes of The Fugitive offered a who's who of Hollywood character actors and upcoming talent. Many guest stars appeared in multiple episodes. Mel Proctor's book, The Official Fan's Guide to The Fugitive, lists all the actors and their episode numbers in Appendix 5.

Musical score

Pete Rugolo, who worked on David Janssen's earlier series Richard Diamond, Private Detective, composed the original music for The Fugitive. (Rugolo would later work with creator Roy Huggins on Run for Your Life and other projects.) Tracking music was standard practice at the time, but unlike virtually all primetime scripted series of the 1960s, no episode"?not even "The Judgment""?received an original score; all the original music used for the series was composed by Rugolo and recorded in London before the series was filmed. In fact, many episodes had Rugolo as the sole credited composer for the episode's scores. However, only a fraction of all the music heard throughout the series was original Rugolo music. Library music (either from other classic TV shows or from stock music libraries, as was the case with The Adventures of Superman) provided a majority of the episodes' scores. For example, a keen listener could find himself listening to a cue from the Outer Limits series during the climactic final episode of The Fugitive. Numerous cues from The Twilight Zone episode "The Invaders" are used to strong effect throughout the series, notably in the climax of the episode "The Witch". The old pop songs "I'll Never Smile Again" and "I'll Remember April" each appear several times in the series, often associated with Kimble's deceased wife, Helen.

What little original melody was actually written and recorded was built around a fast-paced tempo representing running music. Different variations, from sad to action-oriented, would be used, with many arrangements developed for the music supervisor to select as best suited for particular scenes. There was also an original "Dragnet"-type theme for Lt. Gerard.

A soundtrack issue containing the key music Rugolo wrote and recorded for the series is now available on CD from Silva Screen Records. About 40 minutes in length, this CD contains mono yet hi-fidelity cuts and cues that were recorded in London.

1. Theme From The Fugitive (1:18)
2. The Kimbles (2:48)
3. Tragic Homecoming (3:53)
4. Under Arrest (1:43)
5. Lt. Gerard (1:46)
6. The Verdict/Train Wreck (2:07)
7. On The Run (1:57)
8. The Life Of A Fugitive (1:27)
9. Main Title Theme (:39)
10. Life On The Road (1:35)
11. Main Theme - Jazz Version (1:30)
12. The One-Armed Man's Name Is Fred Johnson (2:38)
13. Brass Interlude (2:53)
14. Sorrow (1:03)
15. Dreams Of The Past (1:11)
16. Youthful Innocence (1:35)
17. Back On The Road (1:11)
18. A New Love (2:16)
19. Family Reunion (2:34)
20. Watching And Waiting (1:33)
21. Kimble vs. The One-Armed Man/Hand To Hand (5:11)
22. The Day The Running Stopped (2:12)
23. Freedom And Finale (:43)
24. End Credits (1:09)

For the release of Season 2, Volume 1, entirely new musical scores (created on synthesizer and composed by Mark Heyes, with additional contributions by Sam Winans and Ron Komie) were done to replace the tracked music that had been used for original and rerun broadcasts, syndication and earlier home video releases. CBS/Paramount has yet to offer any detailed explanation for the music replacement, though a recent article on the Film Music Society's web site suggests that the use of several cues from the Capitol Music Library that may have been difficult or impossible to clear could have been the cause. Many fans of the original score wrote letters of protest and boycotted this release with the hope that CBS/Paramount would fix this debacle by reissuing the collection with all of the original music intact.

On 17 February 2009, CBS/Paramount announced a program to issue replacement discs for Season 2 Volume 1, with much of the original music restored. This was a significant effort by CBS to mollify outraged fans. While this was a step in the right direction, many fans concluded that the replacement discs were too little, too late. Several episodes still had major portions of their original scores replaced by the new compositions, and at least one key scene in the episode "Ballad for a Ghost" was deleted entirely. Inexplicably, many of the missing cues were clearly owned outright by CBS. These cues (correctly) appeared in some scenes, yet were replaced in others, reflecting an overcautious CBS Legal Department and needless music replacement.

Episodes

The Fugitive premiered in the United States on September 17, 1963. A total of 120 episodes were produced over the course of the show's four seasons, with the last original episode airing in the United States on August 29, 1967.

The series aired Tuesdays at 10:00 on ABC.

Final episode

The two-part final episode entitled "The Judgment" aired on Tuesday, August 22, and Tuesday, August 29, 1967.

The one-armed man, going by the alias "Fred Johnson", is arrested after tearing up a Los Angeles strip bar. When Kimble reads about it in a newspaper while working in Arizona, he travels to Los Angeles. However, Gerard has been alerted and has already arrived in Los Angeles, where he is spotted by an old friend of the Kimble family, a woman named Jean Carlisle (Diane Baker), who is working as a typist with the Los Angeles Police Department. She immediately contacts Kimble's sister Donna, who, after failing to reach Kimble at his last job in Tucson, manages to find out and tell Donna where Kimble might be arriving in Los Angeles. Jean manages to reach Kimble just as the police start searching the area and gets him safely away to her apartment. Later, she reveals that she has been fond of him since she was a child, when her father's arrest and disgrace left her family with no friends save the Kimbles. After Kimble learns that Johnson has been arrested, he elects to turn himself in in a final hope of confronting Johnson and making him tell the truth. Before he can carry out his plan, Johnson is bailed out of jail by a corrupt bail bondsman who formulates a plan to blackmail the person who supplied the bail and who is himself killed by Johnson after revealing that the money came from someone in Stafford. Kimble decides that he must leave Los Angeles and head back home immediately, but just as he is about to catch a taxi to the airport Gerard finally apprehends him after chasing him for years. "I'm sorry," Gerard tells him, "you just ran out of time."

While taking the train back from Los Angeles to Stafford, Kimble informs Gerard that he found something that might lead him to the truth and that he believes Johnson is going to Stafford to use the information he killed the bail bondsman for. Gerard gives Kimble 24 hours to prove his innocence, and Kimble agrees to turn himself in if he cannot.

The key piece of evidence Kimble has is the bail bond slip signed by a man using the name "Leonard Taft", the name of Richard's brother-in-law, married to his sister Donna. The man is actually the Tafts' neighbor, Stafford city planner Lloyd Chandler (J. D. Cannon). Chandler learns from Donna that she had received a phone call from someone claiming that he knew who really killed Helen Kimble and arranging a meeting that night at an abandoned riding stable. While Donna and Leonard dismiss the call as a crank, Chandler keeps the meeting. Even though Chandler is armed with a loaded pistol, Johnson easily overpowers and disarms him and blackmails him for $50,000. Later, after learning from Donna about the phone call, Kimble and Gerard investigate out the stable, but find only a dropped unfired bullet from Chandler's gun.

Chandler tries to get the money while hiding it from his wife Betsy, even resorting to putting his house up for sale. Eventually, he cracks and tells her what he had done and why, revealing that he witnessed the murder of Helen Kimble. In a frightful panic after her husband had driven off and after drinking heavily, Helen had called Chandler and he had come over to the house to try to calm her down. While upstairs with Helen, both she and Chandler heard Johnson breaking into the house and witness his attempted robbery. Helen confronted Johnson, who responded by attacking her and beating her to death with a lamp, while Chandler stood frozen on the stairs watching in horror. Johnson spotted him, but seeing that Chandler in his current state posed no threat, he made good his escape. Chandler never told anybody because he was afraid that his standing in the community would be ruined; he had fought in World War II and earned a Silver Star while in combat, and feared that if anyone found out about his moment of cowardice in the Kimble home he would never live it down.

Jean Carlisle returns to Stafford and she and Kimble are briefly reunited. However, because Kimble is unsuccessful in finding his evidence within the 24 hours he was given, he is about to leave with Gerard when Donna finds a bullet hidden in one of her sons' dresser drawers. Shown the bullet, Gerard identifies it as being identical to the one they found at the riding academy the night before. Donna tells her husband and the lieutenant that the bullet must have come from Chandler, who had taken a group of boys to a shooting range the day before. Kimble and Gerard head over to the Chandler residence to learn that Chandler has headed to an abandoned amusement park and is luring Johnson there so he can make up for his earlier unwillingness to talk by killing Johnson.

By the time Kimble and Gerard arrive at the amusement park, Chandler and Johnson have started a firefight with Johnson's pistol squaring off against Chandler's rifle. While trying to stop the shooting, Gerard takes a bullet to his thigh from Johnson, temporarily disabling him. The lieutenant tosses Kimble his weapon and Kimble heads off to finally confront his wife's murderer. Chandler is forced to help Gerard walk, and during the whole time Gerard tries to convince him to speak up so Kimble can be exonerated.

The climax takes place on top of a carnival tower where Kimble has chased Johnson and where they engage in hand to hand fighting while Gerard and Chandler watch from the ground. Kimble is able to extract a confession from Johnson, but Johnson, who is also tired of having Kimble pursuing him, manages to get hold of Gerard's pistol, tells the doctor he is going to kill him and attempts to fire it, but before he is able, Gerard hits Johnson with a well placed shot from the ground with Chandler's rifle. Johnson falls off the top of the tower to his death. Kimble climbs down and tells Gerard that he was able to get a confession out of Johnson, but since he is now dead and there were no other witnesses but him, he cannot prove his innocence. Chandler, apparently having been convinced by Gerard, decides that he will in fact testify on Kimble's behalf in order to exonerate him.

In the final scene of the episode and the series, an exonerated Kimble leaves the courthouse and, after hesitating, shakes the extended hand of Lt. Gerard. Dr. Kimble walks off toward his new life, accompanied by Jean Carlisle. Narrator William Conrad intones, "Tuesday, August 29th: The day the running stopped."

The final episode on August 29 was interrupted or not shown in some parts of the country due to local baseball telecasts. "The Judgment, Part 2", was shown in those markets the following week. The William Conrad voiceover was changed to, "Tuesday, September 5: The day the running stopped." The September 5 ending was used for the VHS release of the episode, while the August 29 version has proved the more popular with classic television stations that have shown it over the years.

Part two of the finale was the most-watched television series episode at that time. It was viewed by 25.70 million households (45.9 percent of American households with a television set and a 72 percent share), meaning that more than 78 million people tuned in. That record was held until the November 21, 1980 episode of Dallas, ("Who Done It"), viewed by 41.47 million households (53.3 percent of households and a 76 percent share), but was later surpassed by the series finale of M*A*S*H, ("Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"), on February 28, 1983, viewed by 50.15 million households (60.2 percent of households and a 77 percent share). According to producer Leonard Goldberg, the network was simply going to end the series with a regular episode without any kind of denouement to the predicament of Richard Kimble, as the network executives were totally oblivious to the concept that a television audience actually tuned in week after week and cared about the characters of a TV series. The timing of the broadcast was unusual: rather than ending the regular season, the finale was held back while suspense continued through the summer reruns.

In 1997, "The Judgment, Part 2" was ranked #23 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

Ratings

• 1963-1964: #28 (21.7)
• 1964-1965: #5 (27.9)
• 1965-1966: N/A
• 1966-1967: N/A

Films

The Fugitive, a feature film based on the series, was released in 1993, starring Harrison Ford as Kimble, Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard (now named 'Samuel' instead of 'Philip', and a U.S. Marshal rather than a police lieutenant) and Andreas Katsulas as the one-armed man (now called Fred Sykes instead of Fred Johnson). The movie's success came as Hollywood was embarking on a trend of remaking old television series into features. The film remained true to its source material, in particular, the notion that Kimble's kindness led him to help others even when it posed a danger to his liberty or to his physical safety. The film also showed Gerard pursuing his own investigation into the murder as part of his pursuit of Kimble and coming up with his own doubts as to the case. To coincide with the theatrical release, NBC aired the show's first and last episodes in the summer of 1993, and later hosted the film's broadcast television premiere in 1996. Tommy Lee Jones received the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film was also nominated for Best Picture.

In 1998, Gerard and his team of Marshals returned in a follow-up film U.S. Marshals. With the exception of actress L. Scott Caldwell, the deputy marshals were played by the same supporting cast. Although the film was a sequel, it did not include the character of Kimble. It did though retain a similar plotline of another fugitive Mark Sheridan, portrayed by actor Wesley Snipes, who evades police to prove his innocence from a government conspiracy.

Television remake

A short-lived TV series remake (CBS, 2000"2001) of the same name also aired, filmed in Everett, Washington starring Tim Daly as Kimble, Mykelti Williamson as Gerard, and Stephen Lang as the one-armed man. CBS canceled the series after one season with a total of 22 episodes. The show was the first lead in to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on Friday nights, which became a hit when it debuted the same year. This incarnation was produced by Warner Bros. Television, the TV division of Warner Bros. Entertainment which produced the 1993 film.

Home video

Prior to home video, The Fugitive was part of the original lineup on the "Arts & Entertainment Network", commonly known as A&E, beginning in February 1984. It ran until the summer of 1994. The show also appeared on the nationwide WWOR EMI Service, on the former KTZZ-TV (now KZJO) in the Seattle area and briefly on the TV Land network in 2000 before disappearing from television altogether.

A total of 42 episodes have been released on VHS by NuVentures Video, with selected shows from the 42 later issued by Republic Pictures. Twelve episodes were also released on laserdisc.

Currently, Republic Pictures and CBS Television Studios own the copyrights to the series (while CBS itself now owns distribution rights); CBS DVD (with distribution by Paramount) released Season 1, Volume 1 on DVD in Region 1 in late 2007. Reviews of the first DVD set have been very positive as the show appears uncut and uncompressed, re-mastered from the original negatives and magnetic soundtrack, although a disclaimer by CBS mentions some episodes are "edited from their original broadcast versions" and some music changed for home video. (Incidental music was altered in at least two episodes, "Where the Action Is" and "The Garden House".) There are no subtitles or alternate languages but English closed captioning are provided, and the "liner notes" consist merely of TV-Guide-style episode synopses inside the four-disc holder. Season 1, Volume 2 was released on February 26, 2008. Season 2, Volume 1 was released on June 10, 2008. Many reviews of this third DVD set were highly negative due to the replacement of the original used music tracks with the aforementioned synthesizer music (see Musical score section above for details.) Season 3, volume 1 was released on October 27, 2009, and Season 3, volume 2 was released on December 8, 2009, , with most, but not all, of the original music intact. Season 4, volume 1 was released on November 2, 2010. It appears that this volume will be the first to include any extras, including a Featurette titled "Season of Change: Composer Dominic Frontiere". Season 4, volume 2 was released on February 15, 2011.

On November 1, 2011, CBS released The Fugitive- The Most Wanted Edition on DVD in Region 1. This 34-disc set featured all 120 episodes of the series as well as bonus features, such as the unaired version of the pilot with different footage. The set was recalled due to possible music issues, but some sets were released.

CBS's rights only cover the original series; the later productions were handled by Warner Bros. Entertainment.

DVD name	No. of episodes	Release date
Season 1, Volume 1	15	August 14, 2007
Season 1, Volume 2	15	February 26, 2008
Season 2, Volume 1	15	June 10, 2008
Season 2, Volume 2	15	March 31, 2009
Season 3, Volume 1	15	October 27, 2009
Season 3, Volume 2	15	December 8, 2009
Season 4, Volume 1	15	November 2, 2010
Season 4, Volume 2	15	February 15, 2011
The Complete Series	120	October 23, 2012