The Outsider is an American detective drama created by Roy Huggins and starring Darren McGavin. A two hour pilot movie aired on November 21, 1967; about a year later, a regular series of 26 episodes aired on NBC for one season from September 18, 1968, until April 16, 1969.

Plot

40-ish Los Angeles–based private eye David Ross (Darren McGavin) is a group-home raised orphan with no family, originally from Puyallup, Washington. (Notably, both series creator Roy Huggins and star Darren McGavin were also originally from Washington state, Huggins from Littell and McGavin from Spokane.) As a teen, Ross became a high-school dropout and a runaway from the group home. At the age of 19, while riding the rails, Ross got into an altercation with a railroad policeman and inadvertently ended up killing him while trying to defend himself. Convicted of murder, he spent six years in prison before receiving a governor's pardon.