Forgotten Television: Lucan

In 1967 a 10-year-old boy was discovered in the woods having been raised by wolves.  No one knew who he was or how this came to be, but his care was handed over to a university’s research institute, where for 10 years he learned to be human again.  Famed professor, Doctor Hoagland (John Randolph) oversees his education and reintroduction to society and becomes a father figure to the now twenty-year-old Lucan (Kevin Brophy).  Lucan retains much of his wolf upbringing giving him an altered metabolism, heightened senses and enhanced strength and agility. Hoagland fights the university’s board of trustees who are threatening to cut the funding for the program and suggests Lucan, whom they believe cannot be trusted or civilized, be confined to an institution. When Hoagland is gravely injured in a car accident, he convinces Lucan that he needs to run or be locked up in a cage for the rest of his life.  Lucan ventures into the world and in the pilot gets a job at a construction site, befriends the owner’s daughter (Stockard Channing), and runs afoul of the foreman, but in the end saves the day using his abilities. Instead of staying and making a new life, he decides to move on, in search of his parents and who he really is. He is also pursued by a bounty hunter hired by the University to bring him back. And so every week, we see the challenges Lucan faces interacting with the human race, whom he never really feels a part of.

This television drama premiered on ABC in September of 1977 and ran for two abbreviated seasons.  The first season had seven episodes, not counting the pilot which was shown as a television movie earlier in May of that same year, while the second season only had four episodes.  The second season also changed the premise and dynamics of the series, having Lucan on the run from the police for a murder he did not commit.  The bounty hunter, Prentiss (Don Gordon) was changed to a police lieutenant attempting to bring Lucan in for trial.

I was eight when this show premiered and absolutely loved it.  I remember fondly watching the episodes and playing as if I was Lucan.  Watching it now as an adult, I can see that the show had some flaws.  The pilot had some choppy editing and the storyline fell into the mundane classic 70s tropes where the lead is chased from city to city each week, helping those along the way, but always being pursued and some of the fight scenes and action sequences were clumsy and not well choreographed. But the show also had some really great things going for it.  Kevin Brophy is charming and played the part very well. He was able to seem human, while also having an animalistic charisma just underneath.  I liked how his eyes would change color to a brownish red when he called upon the wolf part of himself.  And although some of the dialogue was awkward, there was also a poetry within much of it, which worked well in this fantasy drama.  I enjoyed watching Lucan again now as much as I did in 1977, but with different eyes, I appreciated other aspects that I missed as a child.