How do you like the 1960s TV series "The Fugitive”?

Alas, I find it unwatchable. I looked forward to watching the series for many years, had heard many good things about it. Now it’s finally starting to come out on DVD. I like David Janssen and the idea of a man who preserves his integrity and goodness despite the risks and hardships of being on the run after having been wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.

But I’m put off by the ponderous melodramatic voice-over and ponderous melodramatic music. The stories of the three episodes I glimpsed seemed slow, maudlin and unimaginative. I can’t be very fair about it because I kept skipping forward. The tales just didn’t engage me and I’m not curious to see more.

The show began in 1963. Netflix sent me the first three episodes. I don’t think we’d see some of the same hamfistedness in a 2008 television series, but we have other kinds of hamfistedness to endure.

“The Fugitive” was successful. Its idea is good. I suspect if I gave the series more of a chance I’d find a fair amount to like in it. But I’m not willing to give it that chance. Too much other, better stuff to read and watch.

Perhaps I’m spoiled by the slickly done movie with Harrison Ford, which took the trouble to dramatize the murder of Dr. Kimble’s wife, Kimble’s capture and his escape. The series by contrast begins with a mere summary of these events, repeated in the front of each episode. In other words, there is no real pilot episode.

Museum.tv says “The Fugitive” presented “some of the most fascinating human condition dramas of [the 60s], all told in a tight, self-contained semi-documentary style.”

Not unlike the Western hero, which U.S. television had embraced since the 1950s and with which it still had something of an infatuation, Kimble had the appeal of the rootless wanderer whose commitments to jobs, women or society were temporary, yet who at the same time deserved our sympathy as something of a tragic figure. The series’ and the introspective character’s success lay largely with the appeal of actor David Janssen’s intensity in the part…. The drama of the stories came not so much from the transient occupations of the fleeing hero, such as sail mender in Hank Searls’ “Never Wave Good-bye” or dog handler in Harry Kronman’s “Bloodline,” but from the dilemma of the Kimble character himself, something Janssen was able to convey with an almost nervous charm.

I don’t think it’s only the stagy television conventions that are off-putting (like the allegedly “tight” but actually tedious “documentary” style with the thunkety-thunk voice-over). I’ve managed to enjoy episodes of even the often thinly plotted old “Twilight Zone” (the guy behind the counter has three eyes? Oh my God!). But the best television of today (”24,” the new “Battlestar Galactica,” “Lost”) does seem far superior to the best television of 40 to 50 years ago. This era-boundedness doesn’t afflict literary classics. So long as we get a competent translation, we still find the same powerful dramatic virtues in Homer.

What is it about television? Many old movies don’t hold up either, but from the olden times we still have “Gone With the Wind,” “Wizard of Oz,” “Casablanca,” etc., which show that the limitations of a new medium don’t inevitably sabotage a vision. Do we care that we can tell that the Wicked Witch of the West is not actually melting but dropping through a trap door? On the other hand, there’s plenty on the tube these days to prove that all the technique and technology in the world can’t make up for a view of life that is tawdry, vicious or empty.