The true story that may have inspired The Fugitive
Summary SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT The Fugitive is technically a fictional story – both the classic TV series and its blockbuster movie adaptation – but it’s widely believed to have been inspired by a fascinating true crime story. Both the TV and movie versions of The Fugitive revolve around Dr. Richard Kimble’s attempts to evade the law and clear his name after being falsely convicted of murdering his wife.
While Kimble is a fictional character and his adventures on the lam are all fictional stories cooked up by talented writers, The Fugitive is considered to be a sensationalized adaptation of a real case. The Fugitive premiered on ABC in 1963 and ran for 120 episodes across four seasons. The true crime case that the series is thought to be based on took place in 1954, and was the subject of national media coverage, so the producers must have heard about it before making the show.
According to Cynthia L. Cooper’s book Mockery of Justice: The True Story of the Sheppard Murder Case, co-written with Sheppard’s son, the creators of The Fugitive have consistently denied using Sheppard’s story as the inspiration for the series. But the real story and the plot of the Fugitive TV show were too close to be a coincidence. They even have similar jobs: Sheppard was a neurosurgeon and Kimble is a pediatrician.
Les Misérables Was The Main Inspiration For The Fugitive While the creators of The Fugitive refuse to acknowledge the real-life Sheppard case as an inspiration for the series, they have named Les Misérables as their main influence on the plot of the series. In Ed Robertson’s 1993 book The Fugitive Recaptured, producer Quinn Martin described The Fugitive as “a sort of modern rendition of the outline of Les Misérables.
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