This has got to be the most fascinating, atmospheric, have-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat crime series I have ever seen!!! I'm not exaggerating when I say I could watch this all night until the sun comes up. Okay, maybe not that long, but if I didn't already have dark circles developing under my eyes, I could see myself watching past 2am - at least until 3. There were a few times I forced myself off of my laptop after watching an episode because I had to get up early for work the next day. As a crime thriller nut, I feel like I've hit a gold mine. Adapted from a memoir of the same title, and narrated by Walter Winchell (who was a newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator, so his narration made the show feel even more suspenseful), The Untouchables is a fictionalized account of real life Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (brilliantly portrayed by Robert Stack) as he leads a group of federal agents (played by Paul Picerni, Abel Fernandez, Nicholas Georgiade, Bruce Gordon, and Steve London) in 1930s Chicago. The crimes they fight mostly center around gangland activity. There is one flaw: the women's hairstyles looked current for that time, but everything else, such as the costumes, cars, and overall atmosphere, are very evocative of the 30s. The series was groundbreaking not only for its candid dialogue about drug use, alcoholism, and prostitution, but also because its overall content was nothing like anything the public had seen. After shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, it's understandable why people were shocked. The 1950s was a decade of family friendly programs. In The Untouchables, characters were shot, stabbed, slapped, choked, and fell from buildings. The National Association for Better Radio and Television deemed it unfit for TV. Thinking about it now, it's laughable that people were offended. I'm sure they couldn't have imagined television would be so gory six decades later (CSI has actually made me scream). This is probably the first show I've seen that doesn't have any one star reviews and I know why. The acting is intense and the stories are multi-layered. I often find myself rewinding more than once so I can get the gist of what the characters are saying. Besides the violence, critics said it was insulting to people of Italian ancestry. Looking it at from the perspective of a person living in this generation, it's more progressive than what's currently on television. I think it's really cool the actors who played the federal agents were Italian American (with the exception of Abel Fernandez, who was Native American/Mesoamerican. But nonetheless, this show was still ahead of its time to cast someone of his ethnicity), so the actors playing the mobsters weren't the only ones who were Italian. Now when they cast non-Anglo people in crime dramas, it seems like they were only chosen as a token. Most 1950s TV shows are lame. I'd rather watch this over that unrealistic suburbia crap. Oh, and I have no desire to see The Untouchables movie. I bet it doesn't measure up anywhere close to this.
