Need help surviving in a world of moral complexity and injustice?

Great story-telling can do that.

Don’t worry.  This isn’t a meditation on Dostoyevsky or Kafka.

Just a little romp about one of my favorite TV shows with a simple and universal “wrong man” theme.

Working my way recently through the first season – ’63, ’64 – of  “The Fugitive”, I’m once again drawn in by Dr. Richard Kimble’s weekly encounter with alluring females, his heroic stoicism and the cat-and-mouse and – occasionally – face-to-face bump-up with Lieutenant Gerard, the Ahab of network television, obsessed with his capture.

My fascination with this character began when I was an agonized and alienated pre-teen in working-class Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, presumed guilty and trapped by an unforgiving system.

Kimble’s intelligence and tenacity – never giving up his search for the real killer – and his absolute virtue were irresistible.

I rediscovered the show twenty years later re-running on L.A.’s local independent stations.  As a new arrival to Southern California’s vast and impenetrable geographic and social environment, I again needed some consolation.  Episodic TV goes down easy:  If Dr. Kimble could overcome his adversity, how can I complain?

My fifty-year look-back at the show now has an added dimension:

The production landscape for the fugitive’s wanderings across America was, of course, early 60s Los Angeles, offering fabulous photography of familiar neighborhood and rustic locations.  The opening sequence of Kimble fleeing from the fateful train-wreck and splashing into a shallow creek was shot, in fact, in Griffith Park near downtown.

Certainly, many of the 30 opening season episodes conform to conventional TV dramatic formula.  In less than an hour, the well-groomed and soft-spoken Kimball unites dysfunctional families, exposes corrupt business practices, does some nifty doctoring and, of course, persuades adoring women of his innocence.  He always seems to linger a little too long explaining why he must resist their affection, but manages his just-in-time get-aways with perfect timing and closing music.

Produced by Quinn Martin (The Untouchables, 12 O’Clock High, The Streets of  San Francisco), the Fugitive tapped Hollywood’s highly capable and talented writers, editors, composers, cinematographers and technicians.  Ida Lupino (distinguished as the industry’s most prolific woman director) directed three of the early black-and-white shows.  The first season alone featured performances by Robert Duvall, Vera Miles, Sandy Dennis, Jack Klugman, Ruby Dee, Bruce Dern and dozens of other familiar faces.

I’ll probably stop watching after season-one (there were 120 episodes in four seasons), though I may skip to the 1967 finale when Kimble nails the “one-armed man.”  (By the way, the 1993 Harrison Ford feature-film version didn’t register with me at all.  Sorry.)

David Janssen was 48 when he died in Malibu in 1980.  His foil, British actor Barry Morse (who spoke perfect “American” for the series), outlived Janssen by 28 years.

One of the highlights of season-one was episode 11, Nightmare at North Oak, which opens with Kimble’s dream of being cornered and shot dead by Gerard (filmed on Larchmont Blvd. – L.A.’s “Main Street”).

Next, the fugitive wakes up to the sounds of a crashed and burning school bus and proceeds to rescue a dozen kids from the incinerating vehicle a split second before it blows up.

The town hero then becomes its prisoner when his true identity is discovered.  In Act IV Kimble, locked up in a local jail, faces Gerard on the other side of the bars.

The police lieutenant admits that although he’s certain of Kimble’s guilt, he too “has done everything humanly possible” to find the one-armed man.  “It’s my job,” says Gerard.

“It’s also a curse, isn’t it,” asks the fugitive.  “I believe you have nightmares too.  Your nightmare is that when I’m dead you’ll find him.”

Against his better judgment, Gerard allows the town’s parents to walk past Kimble’s cell for a final goodbye and to express eternal gratitude to the escaped murderer for saving the lives of their kids.  But, in the process, the sheriff’s wife slips the fugitive the keys, enabling our man’s inevitable escape.

Sounds a little silly, right?  But try explaining some of the more extreme episodes of the Sopranos.

For HBO and Showtime fans, it’s hard to go back to the mass-produced and stylized episodic dramas of the 1960s.  But if you can suspend critical judgment just a bit, you may discover the Fugitive as a masterpiece of American popular culture.