The Alaskans
The Complete Series
Blu-ray: Warner Archive Collection $69.99
Warner Archive comes through with another all-but-forgotten Warner Bros. TV series, this time The Alaskans, which aired for but a single season (1959-1960). The pitch seems simple enough: a smooth-talking charmer with a good heart, a gorgeous saloon singer, and a rough, tough brute of a muscleman team up to get rich during the Alaskan gold rush by cheerfully cajoling wealth out of the people actually digging for gold. The show gets by on its young, talented cast, including Roger Moore as Silky, Dorothy Provine as Rocky, and Jeff York, fresh from playing foil to Disney’s Davy Crockett, as Reno.
The idea of making the show stand out from competitors by setting it in the Alaskan wilderness must have sounded fresh on paper; on film, it looks as though a couple of sets were built and covered with bleached cornflakes and the cast told to wear fur coats even during Southern California heat spells. They frequently look miserable, and it seems that everybody realized early on that the show simply wasn’t working: Jeff York disappears midway through and scripts were reportedly hastily recycled from other Warner Bros. shows (one of the episodes we previewed, Odd Man Hangs, uses the same script as a Maverick show we watched only a few weeks ago). After the only season, contract players Moore and Provine were hustled into other Warners shows, he to Maverick (as a British cousin) and she to the new The Roaring ‘20s, as… well, pretty much the same character she plays here, only a flapper.
As with Maverick, there are some memorable supporting shysters who show up in a handful of episodes, including Nifty (Ray Danton) and Soapy (Mr. John Dehner), and say, didn’t anybody have a normal name in those days?
Naturally, one of the big thrills of a formulaic show like this is watching for future stars in guest bits; we spotted Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Simon Oakland, and James Coburn, along with such reliable character actors as Tris Coffin, Vitto Scotti, Alan Hale, Jr., Ray Teal, and many more.
Due to the nature of the production and the budget, the episodes are naturally hit and miss; we found in general they improved as they went on, not least of all because various episodes spotlighted one partner or another. In our favorite episode, The Abominable Snowman - a precurser to, off all things, The Outer Limits - York and Provine don't even appear (but we get Ruta Lee as the guest dance hall girl of the week). This frightening episode was directed by Lew Landers, his only credit on this series that we could find - was he brought in for one Halloween episode because of his history of directing The Raven, Return of the Vampire, and The Boogie Man Will Get You? Maybe.
The set includes 36 episodes on nine discs, sans bonus material but meticulously restored from 4K scans of the original film negatives, and the images are clean and bright, right down to the frequent blizzard stock footage. Sound boasts a DTS-HD mono soundtrack and there are no complaints whatsoever.
Due to its scarcity over the decades (even though Roger Moore went on to greater TV success as The Saint and in The Persuaders), this will be a new show to almost all of us, and it's well worth the visit. Recommended; wear your snowshoes.
