This is a nice, crisp installment of "The Fugitive". It's an unexpected treat, coming in the final season which was, for the most part, marred by exhausted writers and actors, and (of course) by color filming.
It is also, mercifully, almost entirely free of the virtue-signaling and tiresome patronizing lectures about personal responsibility that much of the series suffers from. Dr. Kimble doesn't do anything outrageous here, but at least he's not the always-noble eagle-scout type here. Instead of personal character issues, the writers focused on conflicts over leadership, jockeying for dominance: between the two kidnappers (the worse one wins easily over the sympathetic one) but also between the kidnapped girl's powerful father and the chief of police. In the end they compromise, but not until after a fascinating exchange in which each tries to assert authority over the other.
While I'm speaking of these two: the powerful father (who owns a newspaper) is played by Martin Balsam (most familiar as the detective Arbogast who gets stabbed and pushed down a flight of stairs by "Mother" in PSYCHO), and the Commissioner of Police is none other than the great Vincent Gardenia, who was the cop who tracked down Paul Kersey Charles Bronson) in the original DEATH WISH. Most of his output was comedic or semi-comedic, but here he plays the role straight, all business and zero buffoonery. A police commissioner to be reckoned with. Both these actors are very long-standing veterans and have been in more than ten million movies and TV shows.
It is also, mercifully, almost entirely free of the virtue-signaling and tiresome patronizing lectures about personal responsibility that much of the series suffers from. Dr. Kimble doesn't do anything outrageous here, but at least he's not the always-noble eagle-scout type here. Instead of personal character issues, the writers focused on conflicts over leadership, jockeying for dominance: between the two kidnappers (the worse one wins easily over the sympathetic one) but also between the kidnapped girl's powerful father and the chief of police. In the end they compromise, but not until after a fascinating exchange in which each tries to assert authority over the other.
While I'm speaking of these two: the powerful father (who owns a newspaper) is played by Martin Balsam (most familiar as the detective Arbogast who gets stabbed and pushed down a flight of stairs by "Mother" in PSYCHO), and the Commissioner of Police is none other than the great Vincent Gardenia, who was the cop who tracked down Paul Kersey Charles Bronson) in the original DEATH WISH. Most of his output was comedic or semi-comedic, but here he plays the role straight, all business and zero buffoonery. A police commissioner to be reckoned with. Both these actors are very long-standing veterans and have been in more than ten million movies and TV shows.