TV COPS WEEKEND - You can't touch this.

Throughout the Seventies, the Unctouchables was often shown in the UK as part of a double bill with The Naked City - I used to love the show because it seemed like a TV version of all those great Cagney gangster movies. And given that Elliot Ness was based on a real historical character we used to think every episode was the truth, how it really happened.


The show ran for 118, 50 minute episodes though some of the two parters were sticthed together and given cinema releases in the UK - The show was also very violent for its period and shot in grainy black and white-it certainly looked authentic to my young eyes. Of course although the real Elliot Ness was responsible for bringing down Al Capone, as in the first episode, he had nothing to do with the bringing to justice of Ma Baker, Bugs Moran or Dutch Schultz, and yet each of these real life mobsters were stomped over by Ness's team in this TV series.

There was much criticism of the violence in the show and Italian Americans were up in arms at constantly being portrayed as mobsters. In response to this the makers put the disclaimer at the end of each show that much of the story was fictional and also the number of Italian gangsters was lessened as the show went on.

Still at its best The Untouchables is a unique slice of hardboiled television and spawned the Oscar winning Costner movie of the same name.

Below we present in full, The Untouchables: The Dutch Schultz story.