[30] Kung Fu was created by Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander,[31] directed and produced by Jerry Thorpe, and developed by Herman Miller, who was also a writer for, and co-producer of, the series.

"[35] Directed by Jerry Thorpe, it was broadcast on February 22, 1972 (just after the meeting of President Nixon with Chairman Mao), and rerun the following summer, to great acclaim: "(...) ABC and Warner Brothers were deluged with letters, telephone calls and telegrams, all praising the show.

Herman Miller developed the pilot into a series by writing the first three episodes, by including in the plotline Caine's search for his missing brother, and by giving it a style to which following writers could adhere.

[32]: min.19:26  After a very positive reception to the first three segments, in November 1972 the network contracted for 12 more episodes, dropped Alias Smith and Jones and placed Kung Fu in the Thursday night slot at 9 p.m.

Questioned about whether having a half-Caucasian as a student at the Shaolin Temple (which did not accept foreigners) was historically accurate, John Furia Jr. declared: "There is, of course, a certain amount of dramatic license involved in producing a show of this nature.

[38] It was part of what became known as the "chopsocky" or "kung fu craze" after Hong Kong martial arts films such as Five Fingers of Death (King Boxer) and Bruce Lee's Fists of Fury (The Big Boss) topped the US box office in early 1973.

[40][41][42] While injuries were a feature of his career,[43] Carradine's decision to quit Kung Fu was influenced by the bad publicity that a drug-related incident attracted on him and which affected the ratings of the series, what Radames Pera described as sabotage.

[33]: 393 From a broader point of view, Carradine's decision stemmed from the fact that he, from the beginning, hadn't wanted to commit long-term to a series[32]: min.8:18  or stay in it for an extended period,[12]: min.13:10  due to his foremost interest in pursuing a career in filmmaking,[36]: 19 [45] which he said led him to avoid signing a regular contract that would have bound him for five years.

[33]: 363  At any rate, Carradine's warning to the production team that the third season was going to be his last one allowed the writers to plan the final episodes so that all of the remaining story arcs regarding Caine and his brother could be brought to a satisfying end.

[47][48] This series was internationally broadcast in its original run, later distributed in DVD format, has been re-broadcast in cable channels specialized on vintage TV shows like TCM Latin America,[49] and it is also available for streaming.

[54] Even if Camelot won an Academy Award for its art direction and set decoration, the expensive castle (made with wooden beams, wooden frame structures, and building timber covered with faux stone siding)[55] was criticized for its unspecific style placed in a landscape evidently Californian, which resulted in that castle being the last attempt for a studio to construct a large scale set that represented a foreign location.

He decided on a church-like appearance, with a Buddhist mural on the back wall, multileveled wooden candleholders and burning candles between columns, a constant haze, and the projection of strong rays of light as if coming through high church windows.

[58] From late 1972 to early 1975, it became again a Shaolin temple while the Kung Fu episodes were in production, with the Emmy Award winner Antony Mondello[59] and John Lamphear[60] as set decorators.

From the mountain of potential projects sent to me weekly, I unearthed a treatment for a feature length film by a couple of writers named Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander called The Way of the Tiger, The Sign of the Dragon.

[5]: 15  Friedlander blamed the arrival of Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown as senior executives at Warners Bros. for the cancellation of the movie project, because "the general consensus was that the public would not be willing to accept a Chinese hero.

Bruce Lee, having arrived back from Thailand, auditioned for the part of Caine, but the studio was reluctant to hire a Chinese actor, having concerns with his accent, his intense personality, considered not suitable to portray a quiet, serene character, and also because he was "too authentic".

After having "sought every Asian in Hollywood, because you didn't have to be super bright to know what was coming," and found none that could carry the series, they turned to the American side of the character and began auditioning white actors, including William Smith[95] and John Saxon.

Barbara Hershey appeared as a Eurasian woman who flees forced marriage to a warlord played by Khigh Dhiegh (born Kenneth Dickerson), and is denied admission to the Shaolin temple as a student because "You are female – You are also of mixed blood" (s3e10–11).

On the other hand, American women are sometimes portrayed as dependant or even unable to survive without men (s1e14, s2e16, s3e4), but also as independent individuals, like entrepreneurs (s3e23), landowners (s2e14, s3e1–2), ranchers (s2e12, s3e3) or craftswomen (s1e3), according to the feminist currents of the time.

The absence of Native actors and the cultural misrepresentation issue wasn't unique to this series nor to its time; it has led the National Congress of American Indians to pass a resolution on the subject as recently as 2017.

On page 31, she compares a letter from an admirer of Ahn's work as Master Kan with playwright Frank Chin's attack on the series in a 1974 The New York Times article, when he states that apes' roles in movies had evolved better than Chinese images in media.

Even if Professor Chung states on page 177 that "Kung Fu was a groundbreaking series produced by Warner Bros. that intermixed the martial arts genre with Wild West iconography, expanding the syntax of the television western to accommodate "foreign" elements at the scenographic and narrative levels," her analysis decries the way the Kan character is depicted as "emasculated," stereotyped in various ways, and she mentions that Bruce Lee was not cast in the leading role.

Another issue that has come under the scrutiny of academia and the media, which is not exclusive to this series, is the fact that Asian actors of several nationalities and ethnicities appeared in the Kung Fu main or guest cast playing Chinese characters, "interchangeably".

Professor Chung on page 16-17 exemplifies this situation that Asian actors in the American entertainment industry face with the careers of two Kung Fu cast members, Philip Ahn (Korean) and Richard Loo (Hawaii-born Chinese American) who so often played Japanese villains in war movies that international magazine articles about them confused their pictures: "This confusion speaks to the interchangeability of Asian actors, regardless of nationality and ethnicity, which was fostered by an industry insensitive to the diversities and differences within the same racial group."

Even Fred Weintraub, who had lobbied for Lee since the beginning, noted that they needed an actor "to portray the sense of quiet serenity that Caine possessed, a quality that driven and intense Bruce was not known for."

[110][111][112] In consequence, the new show takes the name of the original one while completely separating itself from it,[11][113][114] instead of continuing its story or attempting to build upon its legacy, claiming with good reason that their aim is improving Asian community's representation and visibility.

Despite its historical inaccuracies, the series' dialogue was greatly based on Chinese philosophy, which gave viewers an introduction to its spiritual values, and its dramatic appeal made it the recipient of international accolades.

Rotten Tomatoes calls the series "influential",[118] and Metacritic in describing it says: "A man of peace, though trained to defend himself, Caine always made an attempt to address situations in a way that was morally acceptable to his beliefs, and to resolve them through [the] least violent means possible.

In June 2006, Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander announced that a feature film (which would serve as a prequel to the original Kung Fu series and take place in China) was in development.

[142][143] The series is written by Christina M. Kim and Martin Gero and sees a quarter-life crisis causing a young Chinese-American woman named Nicky, played by Olivia Liang, to drop out of college and take up residence in an isolated monastery in China.