ABSTRACT
To contemporary eyes, the series Kung Fu feels like high-concept television – ‘TV’s first Mystical Eastern Western’, as the title of a 1993 guide to the Warner Brothers series put it (Pilato, 1993). This popular action hybrid featured David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, an exiled Shaolin priest who roams the Old West with a price on his head, encountering spiritual and physical challenges in each episode. Kung Fu ran for three successful series before its star departed in 1975 to pursue (depending on which account one reads) either a movie career or a more meditative way of life. Carradine later reprised the role in a second TV movie, also titled Kung Fu, in 1986 (with Brandon Lee playing his son) and in a 1993 series, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, in which he plays Caine’s grandson in a contemporary urban setting.
