A wonderful book. Stanley Fish, the literary scholar, caught episodes of this old TV show in hotels while travelling and was struck by the premise and development: a man convicted of murder but innocent of the crime and essentially at peace with himself who runs from the law and encounters people square with the law but far from peaceful with themselves and others. Fish writes (p. 11): “The Fugitive is not a theological text, but its moral structure mimes theology’s preoccupation with primary values and the awful consequences of falling away from them.” I began reading and then ordered the series (all 120 episodes) on DVD to watch as I read. The book is not an episode guide, and many episodes are not mentioned at all. But it explores with insight the morality of freedom (legal, emotional, spiritual). Many of the best episodes are modern parables of kindness. One of the best comments in the book (p. 147) comes from the poet-essayist Georgia Jones-Davis in 1993 (after the Harrison Ford film came out, which is a chase story and therefore unlike the series at its best): “The old television series was an Edward Hopper painting in motion. . . . It echoed Thomas Wolfe’s poetic monologues about America at night, the loneliness of small towns under a prairie moon, train whistles, bus rides into empty town squares. . . . And David Janssen—he of the big ears and basset-hound eyes, surely the saddest face in America: he looked even more depressed when he smiles—captured in Richard Kimble a quiet, gentle man of dignity.”