Doing a remake always seems stressful. Kiefer Sutherland dived in on the deep end for a Harrison Ford classic that didn’t quite work out. Not because he was attempting to redo one of the best thriller movies, but because the platform completely fell apart.
Well, also the first part too. Sutherland starred in another version of The Fugitive. Yes, another reboot of one of the best TV series, stepping into the shoes of one of Ford’s best movies. A tricky proposition, even if your star made 24, so knows his way around genre television and political intrigue.
Sutherland plays detective Clay Bryce, essentially Tommy Lee Jones’s character from the ’90s movie, while Boyd Holbrook took on Ford’s role as the wrongfully accused Mike Ferro. Instead of being framed for killing his wife, Mike’s become public enemy number one for allegedly bombing the LA subway.
Cue a great cat-and-mouse chase. Despite the starpower, this version doesn’t quite boast the style and panache of the ’93 version. But then again, Ford and Jones directed by Andrew Davis? A hard formula to top.
Doesn’t help that this was made for Quibi, that streaming service designed for mobile devices that launched in 2020 boasting an incredible swathe of Hollywood talent. Episodes were broken into sub-ten-minute chunks that you watched on your phone. The whole thing was an expensive disaster, and all the drama series would be lost if not for Roku, which bought the library for pennies when Quibi went under.
That’s where you can find The Fugitive now. In 2020, Sutherland revealed one thing he liked about Clay over Jack Bauer. “This character has something Jack Bauer never had, which is a sense of humor, and I was so thrilled by that,” he told Forbes. “On 24, I think Jack smiled once during the entire show, and that was on the plane when he was handcuffed to Nina Myers. That’s not a lot of smiling in 216 hours.”
Alas, don’t hold your breath for season 2 on this one. You’ll have much better luck waiting for the Mayor of Kingstown season 3 release date and the Yellowstone season 5 part 2 release date. Check out our guide to the Sons of Anarchy cast and the Special Ops: Lioness cast if you’re after more thrills, too.