The Untouchables

I can still remember how shocked I was when I heard this program was cancelled. Every episode was good; one even dealing with bootlegging on an Indian reservation( where liquor had not been permitted to be sold for years prior to Prohibition.) I was also struck by the stunning look-alikeness of Tom Amandes to Jimmy Stewart. They could have been twin brothers.Even their voices,mannerisms were similar. I wonder if this had anything to do with the series sudden disappearance. William Forsythe was the best Capone to-date, even outdoing de Niro. The supporting cast was also excellent. I think this series was better than the original series with Robert Stack. What made Stack so good was his toneless performance.Amandes gave the character flesh and blood and a mind. Would like to see the series out again.

"The Untouchables" had many great elements:

1. An excellent cast, including several familiar faces from TV and films: Tom Amandes ("Everwood"), William Forsythe ("John Doe," "UC: Undercover," "Out for Justice"), John Rhys-Davies ("The Lord of the Rings," "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), and David James Elliott ("JAG").

2. Some entertaining -- if historically unrealistic -- stories, combining gangster action stories with looks into the personal lives of the characters, especially the relationships with Al Capone (Forsythe) and Eliot Ness (Amandes) and their respective wives and children.

3. Fantastic theme music by Joel Goldsmith (I'm still humming it, and I haven't seen the show in 10 years). I wish they had released a soundtrack album for the series.

Though the show was on for only a year and a half, "The Untouchables" was able to tell a complete story, fleshing out both the heroes and the villains into complex characters, and it wrapped up most of the plot lines by the final episode.

This series would make an ideal DVD box set. Are you paying attention, Paramount?

I honestly enjoyed this series. It moved fast and had great music. In fact, I wish I could find the theme song an a CD someplace. There were moments in which the writers drew parallels between Ness and Capone, revealing that the two men actually had some things in common. I never missed an episode and was truly disappointed that it was not renewed for a second season.

One of my favorite movies of the 80s was "The Untouchables," and when I saw that a show was coming out on the same subject, I thought it would be another crummy TV spinoff like "Uncle Buck."

But, despite the fact that the TV show didn't have the big names of the movie version, I found the show to be much more believable and suspenseful, without the glaring anachronisms that the movie had (e.g. Frank Nitti being killed at the Capone trial in the movie).

William Forsythe (Capone) does an INCREDIBLE job...he AT LEAST equals the great Robert DeNiro's performance of the same character. Also, John Rhys-Davies and Tom Amandes give great performances and the show's writing was excellent. It's a shame it had such a crummy time slot and was canned so soon.

Yes, this really was a great show. Two corrections to make on the previous comments that were left: a) The show DID last more than one season; it was on for two. The show ran from January 1993 to September 1994 (the last new episode aired in June 1994). b) Second, it was not on FOX, but on UPN (or whatever they called themselves in the early 90s; it may have been "Universal 9" here in the NY area.)

I think the show ended because William Forsythe announced he was not coming back for a third year. Also, I remember there was some controversy back in 1993 because there was a healthy dose of ethnic slurs on the program, directly mostly towards Italians, Irish, and Poles, and some Italian-American groups were offended by it.