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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Crime Drama,At It's Finest Hour, 25 March 2004
Author: rcj5365 from Durham, North Carolina

Crime: The unknown nature of it all,and the agents who would stop at nothing to bring them to justice remains one of the greatest crime-drama shows ever to come out of the golden age of television from the late 1950's,early 1960's.

The Untouchables may have been one great show,but in its day it was just that..one of the most violent crime shows on television,but during its four year-run it was propelled into the art of TV greatness when it aired on ABC-TV from September of 1959 to September of 1963.

Produced by Quinn Martin and Desi Arnaz,under his production company Desilu Productions,the series produced an astounding 114 episodes,all in black and white,and stood shoulder to shoulder with such giants as Bonanza,Gunsmoke,not to mention in that same time frame,Maverick,and classic shows like Rawhide and The Riflemen and it was during the four incredible years that this show ran,won Emmys for its breathtaking scripts and incredible acting. At the time this show was on the air,Desi Arnaz's production company,Desilu was producing shows like "Make Room For Daddy"(The Danny Thomas Show),"The Andy Griffith Show", and others and would go on after The Untouchables went off the air to created the shows "Gomer Pyle","I Spy","Mission:Impossible","Star Trek", "Mannix",and would co-produced his own comedy show,"The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour",and would be in charge of production,which went un-credited for "The Lucy Show" starring Lucille Ball during the show's first two seasons.

The Untouchables was groundbreaking at its finest and it was that reason to see why this was just so. Set in the prohibition era of Chicago during the late 1920's,early 1930's,during the depression,Special Treasury Agent Elliott Ness(played by Robert Stack) and his band of crimefighters must deal with bootleggers,gangland murders,assassins,and crime figures and mob bosses like Al Capone (Neville Brand) and Frank Nitti(Bruce Gordon). Brilliantly and expertly narrated by the great Walter Winchell,this power-packed crime drama of a series got the story told without the use of the screen gore,explicit profanity and blatant violence,but this show had plenty of gunplay and some of it was maybe tone down in this day and age,but during the show's run it was very violent,for instance the breaking of glass and the ricoheting of bullets were the standard but you never got to see any blood or gory stuff on the show,which was at the time prohibited due to the censors. This would become so true when Brian DePalma did the movie version of "The Untouchables" in 1987 with Kevin Costner in the Robert Stack role and Robert DeNiro in the Al Capone character and here this version was more violent and graphic than the TV show,which by the way gave Sean Connery an Oscar for his performance.

But getting back to the TV show of the same title,

Among the superior work by Stack,Brand,and Gordon,this show had a array of special guest stars that appear on the show almost on a weekly basis and the guest list included: Jerry Paris(long before his days on "The Dick Van Dyke Show"),Telly Savalas,Oscar Beregi,Jr.,Steve London, Jason Wingreen,Jason Robards,Jack Klugman,Grant Richards,Elizabeth Montgomery(long before her collaboration on "Bewitched"),Lee Grant,Abel Fernandez,Charles Bronson,James Coburn,and so many more. This was as awesome production that was to perfection along with Nelson Riddle's theme score.

I got the chance to catch one of the episodes on video recently,and it goes to show that this series needs to seen again and needs to be put on there on DVD,especially with the first two seasons of the series. Sometimes they do show this long lost series seldom at times on New York's WOR-TV and its very sad that the cable network's A&E,Nick at Nite,TV Land,TRIO,or The History Channel doesn't air this program.

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14 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Most Powerful; Sometimes Graphic; the Best Anti-Crime Show of All Time, 30 September 2005
Author: silverscreen888

This show's concept was hastily developed to become a one-hour weekly dramatic series after the success of the beautifully produced made-for-television movie "The Scarface Mob". At first, the producers tried filming the capture of other important criminals using Eliot Ness, the TV-film's fictionalized real-life hero, as their central character. Then they designed a unit like the 1930s "Untouchables" squad depicted in the TV-movie, a federal group combating gang activity and other crimes in Chicago, one headed by Ness (Robert Stack) who worked out of an office in the city. He had six men, with Martin Flaherty (Jerry Paris), Jack Rossman, (Steve London), Enrico Rossi (Nicholas Georgiade), Lamarr Kane (Chuck Hicks) and William Youngfellow (Abel Fernandez) as its mainstays. In the second year, Paris left to be replaced by Lee Hobson (Paul Picerni) for the remainder of the series' run, and Cam Allison (Anthony George) was added for that year only. It was also decided that Frank Nitti (Bruce Gordon) and other mob bosses would be used as the main scheming villains without a regular "Al Capone" being portrayed. Nitti was killed off four times during the series, but Gordon was so popular with the show's watchers he was resurrected each time. A stable of regular police and ganglord types was also developed, played by Oscar Beregi, Joseph Ruskin, Frank Willcox, and Nehemiah Persoff with regular police and useful guest stars being hired a number of times. As Robert Stack had feared from the beginning, the show tended to marginalize the role of the ethical Ness in favor of unglamorously and dramatically portraying the activities of the victims, criminals, or crimelords of the week. The use of a narrator, radio commentator Walter Winchell, helped to keep the ethical view uppermost in observers' minds; and frequently, Ness and his squad were able to get across the desirability of cooperating with police, as this idea finally sank in. Outside agents played by John Gabriel, Jack Lord and others were sometimes used to improve a script. But from the first, the show's outstanding quality was the abilities of writers, directors and guest actors to produce powerful hour-long series. "The Petrone Story", "The Rusty Heller Story", "Cooker in the Sky", "Ginger Jake" and a hundred others may have occasionally overdone graphic detail and use of machine guns, but they were often brilliantly cinematic. The list of directors who toiled for the series included 29 first-raters including Ida Lupino, Tay Garnett, Vincent McEveety, Paul Wendkos, Richard Whorf, Walter Grauman and Bernard L. Kowalsi among others. The writers' list included 40 names, many illustrious, such as Robert C. Dennis, David P. Harmon, Ernest Kinoy, Harry Kronman, John Mantley, Gilbert Ralston, Sy Salkowutz, Alvin Sapinsley, George Slavin, William Templeton. Guest stars such as Patricia Neal, Elizabeth Montgomery, Lee Marvin, Arlene Martel, Will Kuluva, Dolores Dorn-Heft, Robert Middleton, Ruth Roman, Brian Keith, William Bendix, Barbara Stanwyck and Joe de Santis were always an extra cause to tune in to the latest adventure. In the last year, producer Quinn Martin bowed to pressure groups and tried to replace Italian surnamed villains with others; but the top-ranked series was canceled after 4 unforgettable years. To measure the quality of "The Untouchables" against most other series is impossible; its scenes have far more power than those of almost any other series; It was not always ethical fiction; but the series always had first-rate production qualities, acting, writing and directing. It holds a very high place in U.S. film history.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Crime:those that commit and those that try to stop...one of the greatest ever!, 21 October 2001
Author: Michael O'Keefe from Muskogee OK

Quinn Martin, Desilu and Robert Stack propelled a crime series into the status of TV greatness. This series ran 114 episodes long, but stands shoulder to shoulder with such giants as GUNSMOKE and BONANZA. Set in Chicago, late 20s and 30s during depressed times and prohibition, Special Treasury Agent Elliot Ness(Robert Stack)and his band of crime fighters must deal with bootleggers, gangland murderers, assassins and crime figures like Al Capone(Neville Brand) and Frank Nitti(Bruce Gordon). Expertly narrated by Walter Winchell, this power packed crime drama got the story told without the use of on screen gore, profanity or blatant violence.

Besides the super work by Stack and Gordon others became familiar faces:Nicholas Georgiade, Oscar Beregi Jr., Anthony George, Abel Fernandez, Jerry Paris, Steve London, Grant Richards and Jason Wingreen. This series was so near perfection production wise. Awesome.

Note: TV Land, A & E, Nick at Nite, TNN...somebody put this back on the air for future generations.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A web of mysterious gangland horror, 14 March 2002
Author: Jeff Hill (jeffhill1@hotmail.com) from Sapporo, Japan

I had never heard of "The Untouchables" TV show until one morning

my 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Schmidt started ranting about the

graphic violence depicted in movies and on television shows such as

"The Untouchables" and what was he world coming to? From the next

broadcast, I was an avid fan. Much as in the style of the James Cagney

classic of 1933, "Public Enemy," "The Untouchables" wove a web of

mysterious gangland horror by NOT showing the graphic violence but by

instead keeping the killing in the shadows. The creators of the series

never forgot that there is nothing you can show in theater that can

measure up to the imagination of the audience. Another mysterious dimension to the series is, like "The Alfred

Hitchcock Show", "The Untouchables" had an uncanny knack of featuring

actors who would later become stars or at least very well known faces

in movies and on television. After 4 years in the air force including

a year in Vietnam, I watched the series as daily re-runs during the

summer of 1971 just before going to university in Tokyo. One episode

had Telly Savalas as an up and coming bookkeeper with The Mob run by

Frank Nitty while Al Capone was in prison. That evening other business

pulled me away from the television set and I figured I'd see the second

half of the show some other time. Because I have been in Japan ever

since, I never did find out whatever happened to the character played

by Telly Savalas. Less than two years later, however, Telly Savalas

finally made it big in television as Kojak.

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6 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Characters frozen in time., 25 February 2002
Author: JBall75487 from Lincolnshire, England

Seeing an excerpt from 'Untouchables' on satellite TV recently brought back some memories of forty years ago, when I looked forward in eager anticipation to seeing the weekly appearance of Eliot Ness and his associates. To see them again was to see characters apparently frozen in time, operating in a mythical world where the differences between good and evil were clearly delineated and the 'bad guys' got their just deserts. Notwithstanding the fact that Capone and Ness never met, that Ness had little, if anything, to do with putting Capone behind bars, the programmes were quite well directed and acted, even though some of the supporting characters had little,if anything, to say - I can remember often waiting for some considerable time for 'Rico' (Georgiade)to say his only line ! Enjoyable,nevertheless, as cinematic curiosities, well crafted, but so far removed from historical reality as to be a rather threadbare tapestry of the events which the series purported to represent.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
love it!!!!!!!!1, 1 August 2004
Author: beth guarnieri from north augusta, s.c.

i became aware of the untouchables in the mid-late 1970's. when it was on, i stopped everything to watch it sometimes twice a day. didn't matter that i saw each episode a million times! the stories, the acting, the theme song was the best there is. Robert stack,Paul Picerni, Bruce Gordon, Neville Brand and especially Nick Georgiade (who is my very most favorite) all did great jobs. the show still holds up today. in fact, its better than most of whats on today! it would be great if a channel would pick it up and we could watch it again. just knowing these untouchable websites exist makes me feel really warm and good. thanks for being here for us. I've been trying to locate nick georgiade to write a fan/thank-you letter but have been unsuccessful. well, i can look at him here. i miss this show.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Great To See This Series Is Finally on DVD, 14 April 2007
Author: possumopossum from United States

I bought the first series of DVDs yesterday and until then, I never knew there was a two-hour pilot movie about it. I always thought Robert Stack was a better Eliot Ness than Kevin Costner. Stack's Ness was more like a tough, no-nonsense federal agent while Kevin Costner played him more like a nerdy accountant. This used to be my dad's favorite show and, on nights when I didn't have school the next day, he would let me stay up and watch it with him. When I was in college, I caught it when it was in syndication. I hope they continue to put out these DVDs until they have the whole series out. I'm really looking forward to it.

Life sure was simple back when this series first aired. You rooted for the good guys and hissed at the bad guys and you were glad, in the end, to see Capone and his cohorts get what was coming to them. It also shows that we have to be ever vigilant with our government officials so that this kind of evil cannot permeate our society. Great action-packed series and now lives forever in the DVD format. Now, if only THE FUGITIVE would come out on DVD.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
An outstanding series where the bad guys are really bad, 1 December 2008
10/10
Author: James Lawrence (ynot@earthlink.net) from United States

Although the reputation of The Untouchables is that it is about prohibition, there are more stories about murder and extortion than about the alcohol trade, which is a background in many stories, but central to only a handful.

These bad guys are really bad. Not only are there the commonplace shootings, but people have their cars blown up. They are knifed in the back. They are strangled in the back seats of cars. They are blinded when acid is thrown in their faces. They are hanged. They are set on fire. Good friends and reliable employees have their lives snuffed out with the villain employing less thought than he would spend on selecting the right tie to wear. As Frank Nitti (exquisitely played by actor Bruce Gordon) put it, while plotting the murder of a young man who worked tirelessly to make Nitti's enterprises succeed, "It's a matter of economics. Two of these (displaying bullets) cost 38 cents." While Frank Nitti is the best known of the criminals in this outstanding series, he appears in a tiny minority of the stories, about 25 of 118. Other actors with different personalities but equivalent levels of viciousness terrorize the innocent and not-so-innocent with levels of violence that are shocking even today, and were surely even more shocking in the 50s and early 60s.

While Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti is the best remembered portrayer of the gangsters from this show, in the other episodes, veteran actors like William Bendix and Nehemiah Persoff, and then-young actors like Martin Landau and Robert Redford, put on entertaining and gritty performances that rarely disappoint. All the while, the newsreel style announcing of Walter Winchell adds enormously to the sensation of reality.

Today's viewer has the fun, not available to the viewers back then, of frequently spotting future stars in the cast, like Alan Hale Jr.(Skipper on Gilligan's Island), Elizabeth Montgomery (Samantha on Bewitched), Carroll O'Connor (Archie Bunker on All In The Family), Gavin McLeod (Capt. Steubing on The Love Boat), Jack Warden (veteran of countless movies and TV shows), Lee Van Cleef (perennial star and costar of westerns), Peter Falk (Columbo), Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies -- without his toupee). The list goes on and on.

Two often-made criticisms of the show are justified, but to my mind, unimportant. First, it is true that in real life Eliot Ness never met most of the notorious criminals that he and his men defeat on the show. However, the show is admitted to be fictional. Second, it is true that the characters of the good guys, Ness and crew, are not particularly colorful. However, the gangsters and their victims provide ample color, and the solid steadfastness of Robert Stack as Eliot Ness and the rest of his crew gives viewers an anchor of emotional security in the face of the omnipresent evil portrayed on the show. Without this, the helplessness of the victims in the face of the ruthlessness, treachery and cold-heartedness of the villains that dominate the show episode after episode might be difficult to bear.

Everyone will benefit when the operators of networks that play reruns of old series finally decide to put real quality before the viewers and begin to regularly show The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Rawhide, and the other real classics of years past.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the greatest television series ever, 4 September 2000
Author: gmr-4 from Lowell, Mich. U.S.A.

I must differ only slightly from the praise of one who precedes me, but yes, it was a cracking good show! When a local station ran the series in syndication at midnight in 1967, I turned into an insomniac.

Part of it was my youth; part was/is the b&w presentation giving it a brooding, "gritty" (pardon the cliche) flavour; part was the musical score. Frankly, I found it much superior to the colour and more mature (?) series recently under the same title. Possibly the early '60s series had the elements of a morality play that move some part of me that the more ambiguous -- and in places historically accurate -- new UNTOUCHABLES can not.

One thing bothers me, however, although I fully understand that in the television productions of forty years ago one had to be discrete. It concerns the depictions of violence. I do not object (within reason) to violence per se, but THE UNTOUCHABLES showed a lot of it without the horror. With a more jaundiced eye of the 1990s, when on very rare occasions I have been able to see an old time episode, I am struck by the trivialisation of violent scenes. Even the point-blank firearms shots are comically muted, and there is never a hint of flying blood.

That said, however, I consider the advent of THE UNTOUCHABLES and BONANZA in the 1959-60 season as the beginning of the REAL "golden age of television" in the United States.

Post scriptum: I am sure there were a couple of spin-off "made for TV" movies in the 1960s from the series. Of that I know nothing more save the title of one of them: THE GUN OF ZANGARA.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Robert Stack Takes On The Mob, 23 January 2009
6/10
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

Before Brian DePalma gave us his stylish telling of the tale Eliot Ness and his band of Treasury agents, the world was reintroduced to them via this television series from Desilu productions. Eliot Ness was portrayed in tight-lipped, square jawed fashion by Robert Stack and it became his career role.

If Ness had only lived to see it. After his high point in leading that gang of Treasury agents in Chicago that raided illegal liquor establishments with flair, Ness went on to become Cleveland's Chief of Police and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of that city. He drifted into obscurity after that.

But shortly before that Ness who was in bad health and in a bad financial situation contacted author Oscar Fraley who helped him ghost write his memoirs of those days. Ness died right after that and the book was published after his demise. It was then snapped up by Desilu productions because Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz saw potential for a television series.

The Untouchables had a good run for a few seasons. The period atmosphere was helped by the familiar voice of Walter Winchell who lived through that period and covered it. Winchell helped give the series a ring of authenticity it didn't deserve.

After a while the Untouchables were in New York dealing with Lucky Luciano and those gang wars, dealing with the Purple gang of Detroit and others that had nothing to do with what they really did. They hit Al Capone and his competitor Bugs Moran in the pocketbook, but of course were not the ones who brought them down. We all know it was those busy accountants in the US Attorney's office in Chicago that did the job.

The success of the series spun a brief spurt of nostalgia for that era in America both on the big and small screen. Neville Brand as Al Capone and Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti were a perfect pair of scowling counterparts to the jut-jawed Robert Stack as Ness.

Occasionally the series is still run on the nostalgia channels. It remains an interesting and glamorized look at a part of our past.

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