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The moral question at the heart of the upheavals of the 1960s also infused "The Fugitive": Should laws and traditions guide our actions or personal conscience? To appreciate how pathmaking the show was, consider the resistance creator Roy Huggins encountered when he first pitched his idea about "an innocent victim of blind justice" in 1959. Everyone from family and friends to network executives found the idea repulsive. ABC, the last-place network desperate for new programming, finally bought the series in 1963.

An appeal to outsiders

In most episodes, a moment comes when Kimble's true identity is revealed to someone he has known a short while. The character must decide: Do I turn in a man society brands a wife killer, or do I trust my own instincts, which say the authorities are wrong, and help him escape?

These characters' actions stand in stark contrast with those of the program's symbol of unquestioning authority, police Lt. Philip Gerard (played with cool precision by Barry Morse). Long before Vietnam and Watergate led many Americans to question their leaders, Gerard was a potent symbol of the fallibility of the state and the dangers of blind loyalty. A Javert-like figure obsessed with Kimble's capture, he dismisses his lingering doubts about Kimble's guilt in the name of duty. "Let others debate and conclude," he says in the first episode. "I [am] just an instrument of the law."

The people Kimble encounters tend to sympathize with the troubled hero because they are also outsiders: Americans marginalized by society, not because of what they have allegedly done but because of who they are.

The first episode features a woman and her son trying to flee an abusive husband. In other shows, Kimble is aided by -- and aids, often at the risk of his life -- migrant workers, a black man struggling against racism, people suffering from mental disturbances and a host of others preyed upon by the strong because of their weaknesses.

Such empathy was just taking hold in America, as blacks, women and others marginalized groups began pushing for equality. Through Dr. Richard Kimble, viewers from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., were not given a refuge from reality but a glimpse of the nation's future.

By combining compelling stories with a progressive sensibility, "The Fugitive" shows us how smart a TV show can be -- and reminds us of how dumb and safe most of them are.

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