The Roaring 20's

Excellent TV show set in the Twenties with great cast and stories. I remember seeing this in the 60's and loved the musical numbers in the Charleston Club. Could we please have the entire series on DVD including songs sung by Dorothy Provine listed on each volume. As of now, all we have are a few uploaded to YouTube. I bought the new CD from Amazon which is a compilation of songs from the show. However, many of us would like to see the numbers as well. Warner Bros. for some reason has not released a number of shows from the 60's which were popular such as Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, etc. Why should this be? There are so many series released that are not as good. Thank you.

Once and for all, forget the other series speaking of the same period, thirties or late twenties. Yes, in this show ROARING TWENTIES, you also have from time to time gangsters and machine guns, but not necessarily. You also have dramas and comedies as well, without any gun shots or femmes fatales...But always a very good cabaret and burlesque atmosphere, so close to the one you had in those days. It's mostly an atmosphere show, with pretty good performances: acting and directing. Robert Altman gave the best episodes of the whole show, such as stories in DANCE MARATHON and PRAIRIE FLOWER episodes. Tremendous pieces of work, believe me. So, don't Watch this series with the same expectations as you could have after seeing UNTOUCHABLES or any other series speaking of the thirties. That's all I wanted to say about this unfortunately rare and underrated show.

I too fondly remember the Roaring 20's and had a serious pre-teen crush on Dorothy Provine for many years. As far as I know, the series is not available on video disc or tape. So far the only way I have found to obtain copies (few and far between)of this great series was from sellers on Ebay, who had videotaped the series from re-runs in their local area. It appears that the tapes I purchased were 4th or 5th generation tapes and thus the quality was not as great as I would have liked, but nevertheless, all the copies I purchased, except one, were watchable, and brought back some great memories. Compared to the TV standards of today, these old series are somewhat lacking in story lines and excitement, but Miss Provine's singing is just as entertaining today as it was in the 1960's. That being said, if this great old series did become available for purchase, I would probably be first in line at the checkout counter.

"The Roaring 20's" was a "must see TV" at our house way back when! I remember watching this show week after week! Dorothy Provine as "Pinky Pinkam" was a very believable character. The show had a lot of action and some really good entertainment. I can still hear Pinky singing "Someone To Watch Over Me" is a kind of sad way at the loss of a boyfriend. Donald May and Rex Reason were great as newspaper reporters, both after the affections of Miss Pinkam. There were always car chases and shoot em ups to be had as well as plenty of mysteries to be solved. This show and "The Untouchables" went hand in hand and I so wish TV Land network would realize that us "Baby Boomers" are out here waiting for our shows to turn up on their network! Many "Boomers" would also like to be able to have these shows available to us in a DVD format.

As the Western genre began to decline, the main beneficiary was the private eye genre. Warner Bros. Already spawned a hit with "77 Sunset Strip" which premiered in 1958. That success led to Warner Bros. Taking that template, putting together a similar ensemble cast, and setting the new shows in places like Miami, Hawaii, and New Orleans...much like recent shows like CSI and NCIS did with their respective franchises.

In 1959, two new series premiered, with a theme of law enforcement taking action against Depression-era gangsters. NBC's little-known "The Lawless Years", which lasted for a season and a half, was based on the memoirs of New York police detective Barney Ruditsky. Over on ABC, the memoirs of Eliot Ness became "The Untouchables".

So Warner Bros. Took the setting of these two gangster shows and applied their formula of two or three male leads and a singer, with the result being "The Roaring 20s". Unlike WB's other private-eye shows which had one character for comic relief, popular trends from the era provided a break from the crimefighting. (A 1961 ABC show from 20th Century Fox, "Margie", was a sitcom about an adolescent girl in the 20s.)

But I give that history to set up the review. The strength of "The Roaring 20s" was jointly in the writing and the characters, but also in its ability to capture the fun spirit of that era to avoid the noirish feel of "The Untouchables". We will probably not see it on DVD due to the weekly musical numbers provided by Dorothy Provine, another strength of the show.