Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod was shown traveling on his own. Tod met Lincoln Case, played by Glenn Corbett, late in the third season, and traveled with him until the end of the fourth and final season.

The series is best remembered for its iconic Corvette convertible and its instrumental theme song (composed and performed by Nelson Riddle), which became a major pop hit.

Format and characters

Route 66 was a hybrid between episodic television drama, which has continuing characters and situations, and the anthology format (e.g., The Twilight Zone), in which each week's show has a completely different cast and story. Route 66 had just three continuing characters, no more than two of whom appeared in the same episode. Like Richard Kimble from The Fugitive, the wanderers would move from place to place and get caught up in the struggles of the people there. Unlike Kimble, nothing was forcing them to stay on the move except their own sense of adventure, thus making it thematically closer to Run for Your Life, Movin' On, and Then Came Bronson. Later examples of this traveling protagonist format are programs such as Bearcats!, Quantum Leap, The Incredible Hulk, The A-Team, and Supernatural.