I'm sorry I didn't respond before. I guess it's one of those things I read before I was ready to start answering anything, and forgot to get around to it.

Over the past few months I've been watching quite a lot of FUGITIVE episodes and I have great respect for what David Janssen created in the role of Richard Kimble. It's one of those perfect marriages of actor and character; he doesn't give a bad performance in any episode, and he's at one with the character from the very first shot.

While I have the highest appreciation for Janssen in these terms, I don't think his talent was equally displayed, or deployed, in his motion picture work -- perhaps not even in his other television work, though I've not seen enough of it recently to be a reliable judge. This may have been due to the material he was given to work with, or possibly because Kimble was simply too perfect a fit to be duplicated. I think the later failed attempts to recreate THE FUGITIVE (with Harrison Ford and Tim Daly) offer ample illustration of what Janssen brought to the original series. Ford's FUGITIVE made money, but I consider it a failure.

To put it simply and plainly, he was Richard Kimble and I seriously doubt if anyone else is going to come along and take that distinction away from him.