The Good
This show never gets old.
The Bad
No extra features. Only half the season on this release. Tired DVD packaging.The Untouchables: Season Two, Vol. 2 gives viewers 16 episodes showcasing Eliot Ness's (Robert Stack) elite crime fighting unit going up against the biggest and baddest that Prohibition-era Chicago had to offer. This new installment of episodes sees Ness and Co. benefiting from Washington passing a far reaching racketeering bill. This allows Ness and his unit to move their crime fighting endeavors out of Chicago and into other cities. As you can guess, local bookmakers and other creepos are not too happy to have Ness and his Untouchables putting their nose in their business. As always, Ness manages to prevail showing that good will always triumph over evil.
The Untouchables: Season Two, Vol. 2 is clearly one of the best shows that was ever on television. It really set the stage for police dramas and it showed just how gritty, intriguing and entertaining the procedural drama could be.
Features
No extras came with this release.
Video
Full Screen Format. All in all Paramount has done a pretty solid job with this release. The blacks and whites appear to be pretty solid. Most amazing to me was the clarity of the images. I don't recall there ever being a fuzzy moment on the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if Paramount had remastered these episodes but I can't see anything on the packaging that indicates that. Fans of this show will be delighted to see these "new" versions on DVD.
Audio
Dolby Digital: English Mono/Spanish Mono. Subtitles: English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese. The audio here was also quite sharp. I didn't notice any points where there were drops or where things didn't sound right. Sometimes I could hear audio pops but when you realize that these shows are from 1960, it would stand to reason that the audio assets might get beat up a tad by the compression process. Other than these audio snafus here and there (and they aren't a big deal), this release seems to be in it's perfect sound order.
Package
This color front cover features Ness and his team surrounded by a greenish, gold styled tint. The back gives us another color image of Ness holding a tommy gun, while there are two other black and white pictures served up. There is also a description of what this set contains and technical specs. All four discs on this release are neatly stored in one amaray case. While it wouldn't hurt to see Warner Bros. get a little more inventive with their packaging for classic TV releases, I am pretty satisfied with what they have given viewers here.
Final Word
A famous studio mogul once said (I am paraphrasing) that there's no reason that good can't triumph over evil, so long as the angels are as organized as the mafia. While this might seem simplistic and even elicit chuckles, this is idea is at the heart of The Untouchables: Season Two, Vol. 2. Eliot Ness is very much like the baddies he and his buddies are going after. They are ruthless, conniving and are even willing to bend the law to suit their ends. However, presentation is everything and it is how they do all of these things, and the end result that comes, that makes all the difference.
In today's legal world the tactics of the Untouchables may not fly, yet I for one am glad to see that The Untouchables: Season Two, Vol. 2 documents how sometimes you need to get your hands dirty in order to really get things clean.
The Untouchables was released .