In “Runaway,” the “Fugitive” meets “Everwood” in a story about a family on the run after Dad is falsely accused of murder, and it's another case of two inherently incompatible genres colliding. "Runway" fails as an escapist thriller and it fails as a drama of teen angst, and together they fail even more.

Its premise, a truly preposterous one, is that the family is somehow better off on the lam because the experience has brought them closer than when they were a normal family and not the targets of a massive manhunt.

The only dramatic tension in "Runaway," which premieres tonight at 9 on the CW, is the stunned bewilderment that arises over why the new series, one of only two on the new network, was greenlighted in the first place.

And if the conflicting genres don't bring an early end to “Runaway,” an inherent weakness of this tale of flight surely will. It has no place to go. The genius of any dramatic series is its potential for new storylines. “Runaway" is boxed into two outcomes, capture, in which case the father is either exonerated or goes to prison, which then becomes an entirely different story, or endless running, which after a period becomes quite boring.

It's another case, one of several this season, of a TV series attempting to become a movie told in episodes. It's tough to do, and “Runaway" fails at it.
Movies require resolution. In films like “The Fugitive” or the runaway family flick “Running on Empty” we'll know in two hours the outcome, whether Harrison Ford will find the one-armed man or if River Phoenix will quit running and find a normal life.

TV series by their nature defy resolution. It means the series is over.

Each new development must lead to new storylines. “Prison Break,” with its non-stop chases, ended its first season with an actual prison break, but that did not end the series, only mark a point from which the new season could launch from.

As "Runaway" opens, the Rader family settle temporarily in small-town Iowa, anxious to keep a low profile. The father, Paul (Donnie Wahlberg), a lawyer, has been framed for the murder of an associate with whom he may have been cheating. The family is on the run from the cops, and the real killer is also after them. Wife Lily (Leslie Hope) sticks by her husband, despite feeling betrayed. There's then the eldest son Henry (Dustin Milligan), daughter Hannah (Sarah Ramos) and little Tommy (Nathan Gamble).

It's with the kids that the series shows its first cracks. Henry, Mr. Popular at his old school, pines for his girlfriend. It comes off as annoying and inappropriate under the family's circumstances. Most improbably, the writers have Hannah looking at this huge mess her life is now in as a chance to shed her loser label.
The premiere uncomfortably juggles scenes of family discord (resentful Henry blames Dad for their situation), high school drama (Hannah tries to catch the eye of a football hunk) and conspiratorial action (Paul tries to figure out the dead lawyer’s email password with a dogged U.S. marshal hot on his trail).

The acting is uneven at best. Wahlberg is fine as the worried father but struggles in the flashbacks to his life as an attorney. He's clearly uncomfortable spouting lawyer talk, and the use of eyeglasses as props to make him look more lawyer-like is something out of a high school play.

Karen LeBlanc is the marshal hunting the Raders, and we are told she's a bloodhound who always catches her prey. But of course, that can't happen. But worse she adopts a cocky, brusque delivery that makes her seem almost cartoonish, hardly a worthy adversary.
Hope’s Lily is more effective as the mother, and Milligan as the older son pulls off a hunky broodiness, which will serve him well in future CW teen angst series.

The two are especially effective in a tense scene in which they are together in the family car when a cop pulls Lily over and they must work together to feed him a cover story.

But moments like that are few in "Runaway." Watching young Tommy in class struggling to remember his new name, one can't help but think that maybe the Raders should be caught. At least then the kids could get into foster care and out of their ridiculous plight. They might also get some therapy, which they'll need if “Runaway” should survive the fall.