"The Untouchables" played into nostalgia for the early 20th century, nostalgia that figured into two other popular series that ran around the same time: "The Lawless Years" and "The Roaring 20s". That said, "The Untouchables" had more in common with another long running show that Desilu produced for ABC, "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp." Both were based on idealized memoirs of the respective hero, both protagonists were played as stoic do-gooders without any nuance to their perfectionist view of law enforcement, and both tended toward legend rather than historical fact. As other reviewers have pointed out, much as Earp's reputation for being law abiding was somewhat inflated, Ness's activities were fairly limited in scope to Chicago rather than nationwide.

This show got a lot of critique during it's run for being to violent and glorifying Mafia type criminals. As for the violence, while there is a lot of shooting, there is only a few times you see much blood. The Godfather films and The Sopranos since have done more to glorify the Mafia than this program ever did.The show was well written having an original basis on the book The Untouchables by Elliott Ness. Desilu seemed to be very good at getting writers to adapt fine scripts for most of the show. One does shudder to think what the show would have been if it weren't for Van Johnson's wife telling him to turn down Lucy's offer that Van play Ness because "television will never amount to anything". Robert Stack fits the role very well even though he was not the first choice. The show at it's height was a top rated program though it did not have the long term staying power of I Love Lucy. Walter Winchell was the master stroke of casting in the narrators role. His voice is so authoritative that it gives the show a feeling of reality with each introduction. Desilu did an early parody of the show in the mid 1960's when it was producing the original Star Trek series. If you ever catch it, the episode is called "A Piece of The Action" and Star Trel literally borrowed some of the Untouchables sets at Desilu to film the episode. Years later, Saturday Night Live did a great satire of Untouchables when Desi Arnez hosted.The music, especially the theme song, along with Winchell helps sell this show to the audience.

YEAH--For all those who have been asking:It's coming out on DVD, April 3, 2007. A four disk set, Vol one of the first season. Includes The Scarface Mob and goes up to episode 14, The Noise of Death. Check it out on amazon.If you guys like the show be sure to buy the DVD set which will insure that they'll come out with the rest of season 1 and all the other seasons. I'm tired of watching my old not so good copies on VHS. Columbia House never had the full show on VHS anyway and the copies made from the TV of the episodes CH didn't put out are much inferior. I can't wait to see it in crisp b/w and hear that great soundtrack.Funny thing, my 8th grade English teacher also railed on about the violence on The Untouchables, but the kids were crazy about it back then.

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.