Kimble's on the road again

By LOUISA CLEAVE

So you thought Dr Richard Kimble had exhausted himself? Think again.

The big and small screen's longest-running man returns to television tomorrow night — Dr Richard Kimble, the man charged and convicted of killing his wife, who escapes captivity to track down "the mysterious one-armed man he saw running from the scene of the crime."

It's the never-ending tale of The Fugitive, the 60s TV series that became a 90s blockbuster movie and has returned to the small screen as an internet-era thriller.

Four decades on, two links remain: the man who created the original series, Roy Huggins, is still involved with his characters, serving as the executive producer on the film and the series. And the family of the real-life fugitive, Dr Samuel Sheppard, is still fighting in the American court system to clear his name.

But this time around Tim Daly, seen in the sitcom Wings some years ago, is in the shoes of the man on the run from the dogged detective, Lieutenant Gerard.

The original television series, which screened from 1963 to 1967, starred David Janssen; the Oscar-nominated 1993 film had Harrison Ford.

Mykelti Williamson (Bubba in Forrest Gump) takes up the role of Gerard, made famous by Barry Morse in the original series and Tommy Lee Jones in the feature film.

Discussing the show at a press conference in Beverly Hills, Williamson admitted to some nervousness about following Jones in the role.

But friends arranged for the pair to speak on the phone and Williamson says Jones gave him some pointers for the character and assured him he would be fine.

Meanwhile, Daly is determined to make his own fist of the role and not worry about the actors who have gone before him.

"I just thought it was a great role and I had all the right qualities. I didn't have to worry about paying homage to the actors who did it before me or copy them or steer clear of them."

The pilot episode packs the effects of a big-budget movie into one hour and took 26 days to film — compared to eight days for each subsequent episode.

Daly warns not to expect the harrowing and expensive stunts of the first episode — which cost more than $5 million to produce — to feature in every episode.

"I don't think it's an action series. Most people are familiar with the movie so I think [the producers] tried to transition the audience from the movie into the series. The movie was very action-heavy.

"In retrospect that may have been a mistake, because the core of the show is the drama — people's relationships and Richard Kimble's dilemma. There's a lot of suspense in the show and one of the things television does best is create suspense and have drama.

"We've shot some spectacular action scenes for this show, but unless it's blown up on a big screen it won't have quite the same impact as it does in a feature film."

The Fugitive is filmed mainly in Seattle, but the actors shoot on location across America as Kimble pursues the one-armed-man and Gerard uses modern, crime-fighting tools, including the internet, to track Kimble.

According to John McNamara, the producer responsible for bringing The Fugitive back to the screen, there are 34,000 fugitives in Los Angeles alone, and 17 people employed to find them.

About 29,000 are "guys who haven't paid parking tickets, or are deadbeat dads," but more than 700 are violent offenders, says McNamara.

"A guy like Richard Kimble is not an active offender. He's not a serial killer or bank robber so every month he gets down-graded in status."

McNamara describes The Fugitive as a show which "lives inside all of us" in the same way as James Bond or Sherlock Holmes.

Daly has two theories — "one is the lowest-common-denominator reason and the other the more complicated reason" — about why The Fugitive still makes appealing television.

"The first is that it's a concept that's filled with suspense. All the guy has to do is step out of his door and the audience is on edge because you never know when someone's going to turn him in.

"It's a cop show, it's a doctor show and it's got these terrific chases built into the story. It's all the stuff that makes for good drama.

"The more complicated reason is, psychologically, it's really compelling because one of the things we share as human beings is we all feel a bit alienated. Certainly that's at the core of Richard Kimble's dilemma.

"He can't really open himself up for fear that if he does it will cause either that person or himself some kind of dire pain.

"In the United States, the original series increased our distrust of the legal system, and I think most of our population thinks that in some way they've been wronged by the system. That has certainly happened to Richard Kimble, so people identify with that."

The Fugitive debuted in the United States to a huge amount of buzz and hype about the return of a television hero.

In the months since, the producers found viewers were underwhelmed by the sense of deja vu and have made moves to juice up the series, with a love interest for Kimble.

For several episodes he hooks up with an attractive widow whose husband and child were murdered.

The character will also drop his mopey victim routine to make him more acceptable to sceptical viewers.

Daly carries out many of his own stunts, but the action sequences which worry him the most are not those which involve dangling off bridges or buildings, where "there's always a hidden cable attached some place and I always feel fine.

"The things that are actually the most dangerous are things that are really simple: 'ok, run across the street as fast as you can and narrowly avoid the street car coming down the street.'

"You realise you can't stop an eight-tonne street car and if you slip on someone's coffee you wind up crushed under this huge thing.

"I think one of the reasons I became an actor was because I had an over-active imagination when I was a kid. I was always building crows' nests in trees and making believe and that is what I do in the show."

How viewers have followed The Fugitive through the years ...


David Janssen (1963-67)


Dr Richard Kimble, an Indiana paediatrician, is accused, arrested, tried and convicted of the murder of his wife in their home. Kimble claims he was on his way home from a drive when the murder occurred and saw a one-armed man running from his house on his return. On the way to his execution Kimble manages to escape from the detective assigned to the case, Lt Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), and spends the next four seasons on the run — helping people with their problems and searching for the one-armed man, while running before the relentless pursuit of Gerard, the police detective obsessed with capturing him. As millions of viewers watched breathlessly, Kimble actually caught up with the one-armed man on a high building in the final episode — but he fell to his death.

Harrison Ford (1993)


Now an eminent vascular surgeon, Dr Richard Kimble is arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, despite his insistence that a one-armed intruder had committed the crime. When his prison bus collides with a commuter train and he is set free, Kimble must use his wits to solve the mystery and find the man who killed his wife. Hot on his trail, however, is an equally crafty US marshal (Tommy Lee Jones), who will stop at nothing until Kimble is behind bars.

Tim Daly (2001)


As a surgeon dedicated to saving lives, Richard Kimble could never commit murder. But thanks to a mountain of faulty evidence, the determined Lt Gerard (who has now become a black actor, Mykelti Williamson) steadfastly believes that Kimble killed his wife, and the determined lieutenant fixates on capturing his quarry. Hunted from one end of the country to the other, Kimble tirelessly pursues the truth, spurred by tantalizing glimpses of Helen Kimble's real killer — the one-armed man. Even on the run, Kimble fights to remember his oath as a doctor and vows to serve the strangers he encounters.

* The Fugitive, TV2, 8:30pm Fridays