Mike Ferro (Boyd Holbrook) is an ex-con who has turned his life around and gotten a job in the Los Angeles Transit Authority. When his train is destroyed in a terrorist bombing, he is one of those lucky enough to survive the blast relatively unscathed. But it is not long before faulty evidence - coupled with a few overzealous people with cameraphones jumping to the wrong conclusions - make him look like the guilty party. Wrongfully—and very publicly—accused, the only way Ferro can prove his innocence is to go on the run and search for the real culprits. But one of the LAPD's best detectives, Clay Bryce (Kiefer Sutherland), is hot on Ferro's trail, and will stop at nothing to corner his prey.
The 14 episode series eventually moved to The Roku Channel on May 20, being rebranded as a Roku Original.
The Fugitive provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Dad: Ferro has a family, and keeping them safe is one of his primary motivations.
- Blackmail: Mike extorts a gang leader he helped to build his business for protection while in prison with information that he'd saved on this. He threatens to reveal all this if the guy won't give him a gun, which is done.
- Clear My Name: Mike Ferro is wrongly accused of a bombing that kills over twenty people due to faulty evidence, with the overzealous lead detective and an investigative reporter intent on pursuing him with little regard for what's true driving it further. He has to find the actual culprit, only being exonerated after doing so.
- Cowboy Cop: Clay Bryce, who is noticeably more trigger-happy and aggressive than Sam Gerard ever was.
- Expy: Mike Ferro is one for Richard Kimble - innocent man on the run, desperate to clear his name. Detective Bryce is one for Inspector Gerard - the determined cop obsessed with tracking down the titular fugitive. They even have a confrontation that closely mirrors the storm drain confrontation from the 1993 film, with Ferro getting the drop on Bryce and using this opportunity to insist that he is innocent. Like Gerard, Bryce doesn't care.Ferro: I'm NOT going back to prison again for something I didn't do!Bryce: Innocent men don't run!
- Although Bryce is supposed to be the remake version of Gerard, there's no lack of reviewers who have commented that casting Kiefer Sutherland in the role essentially makes him a copy of Jack Bauer.
- Immoral Journalist: Pritti Patel is not above cutting corners to get ahead of her competitors.Pritti: We're either the first to report it, or we repeat the news that someone else finds.
- Inspector Javert: Clay Bryce is the Javert to Mike Ferro's Jean Valjean. Perhaps even more so than Gerard, as Bryce orders Ferro to be shot on sight, whereas Gerard was adamant that he wanted Kimble taken alive if possible.
- I Warned You:
- Bryce is warned over and over again by those working under him that the evidence increasingly shows someone else than Ferro committed the bombing. When even he can no longer deny this the looks of "I told you so" from everyone say it all.
- Ridge and Pritti are also warned by their Only Sane Man repeatedly that this is irresponsible and wrong and is completely ignored. When them being proven wrong results in Ridge being sued into poverty and Pritti losing her job he comments that he hopes, some day, they can actually grow as human beings from this.
- Just in Time: Bryce kind of makes up for his "Kill on Sight" order before against Mike through coming to save him at the end, shooting the real culprit just as Mike's nearly shot by him.
- Kill on Sight: Bryce orders his men to shoot first and ask questions later if they see Ferro.Bryce: If encountered, he is to be shot on sight.
- Mad Bomber: The real culprit is revealed as be an angry demolitions expert who was injured and denied his deserved compensation from a wealthy businessman. After this, his life fell apart, losing his job, wife and child. He bombs a train the businessman was riding, murdering him and about twenty bystanders. Later he bombs the courthouse for the courts ruling for the businessman. The last target is the insurance company which denied his claims, but that gets stopped. A viewer can sympathize about his grievances, but he deliberated targeted innocent people with no part in what happened to him, aiming for maximum casualties, which puts him beyond the pale.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Mike was convicted on two counts of vehicular manslaughter for supposedly killing his brother and brother's girlfriend by getting into a drunken car crash. It turns out that he was actually asleep in the back with his brother driving, but as they're dead with supposed evidence which showed he'd been driving Mike takes a plea bargain, getting five years in prison instead of much longer.
- Only Sane Man: Jerry Conwell, a reporter who works at the Daily Edge. He's the only one there who seems to have any journalistic ethics or a problem with hanging the bombings around Mike Ferro's neck without any solid evidence.
- Precision F-Strike: In the penultimate episode when the FBI agents admit they've handled this case completely wrong from the beginning Allison Ferro hits them with one of these, which the lead agent admits she deserved.
- Recycled In Space: The original Fugitive mixed with Saboteur, updated for the 21st Century.
- Rejected Apology: Beautifully done in the finale when Ridge and Pritti offer a weak apology to Ferro on the "mistakes" in their reporting. His response is to sue them for slander and libel, force them to cut huge checks to the actual victims and Pritti be fired on the spot with him refusing to even look her in the eye.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Sloan Womack is the Blue to Clay Bryce's Red:Womack: I just want to know if you're 100%...Bryce: Not another word!
- Ripped from the Headlines: Ferro's situation is obviously inspired by Richard Jewell, the security guard who was wrongfully blamed for the 1996 Olympic bombing.
- Social Media Before Reason: Ferro is not framed by an elusive Adjectival Man. Instead, the “tweet-now, confirm-later” culture simply makes it all too easy to incorrectly assume the guilty party.
- Would Hurt a Child: Or, would use a child. Pritti decides she wants to go interview Pearl about "what it's like to be raised by the Manson family" and her boss signed off on this. The actual bomber then takes her hostage while he threatens to shoot her. He doesn't however.
- Wrongful Accusation Insurance: Mike commits multiple felonies while on the run, including resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer while stealing his gun (this gets him the "Kill on Sight" order). At the end there's no indication he will get prosecuted. Granted, it would probably look very bad to do that after nearly getting shot by the police and having to track down the real culprit himself, whom otherwise they might not have found until he murdered more people.
