The Alaskans is a 1959–1960 ABC/Warner Brothers western television series
set during the late 1890s in the port of Skagway, Alaska.
The show features Roger Moore as "Silky Harris" and Jeff York as "Reno McKee",
a pair of adventurers intent on swindling travelers bound for the Yukon Territories
during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Their plans are inevitably complicated by the presence of singer "Rocky Shaw" (Dorothy Provine),
"an entertainer with a taste for the finer things in life".
The show was the first regular work on American television for the British actor Roger Moore.
The Alaskans is closely related to the ABC/WB series Maverick through broadcast and production.
Maverick was the most prominent of ABC's Sunday night of western dramas
For the 1959–60 season, Sundays began with Colt .45 and Maverick,
then John Russell's Lawman and Nick Adams' The Rebel, and concluded with The Alaskans.
This may have influenced the career path of Roger Moore.
The same year that The Alaskans was cancelled, James Garner left Maverick.
Moore became, under protest,[Garner's replacement,
playing Bret Maverick's cousin Beau Maverick in the fourth season of Maverick.
User Review
Celebrating the new state
16 March 2002 | by jeff hill(Sapporo, Japan)
QuoteI remember "The Alaskans" as not just another western but a celebration that Alaska had just been made a state back then in 1959. The show took place during the Gold Rush of the 1890's. Roger Moore played Silky as a guy who was tough enough to take everything rugged Alaska could throw at him and still be calm, cheerful, smooth, and charming. Dorothy Provine played Rocky as a woman smart enough and tough enough to run a saloon and enticing enough to attract every man in town as a customer. Hence, her saloon became a kind of focal point for both the openings and the conclusions of the episodes. By 1960 Hawaii was the new state, so the novelty of Alaska had kind of worn off. So Dorothy Provine moved her saloon to "The Roaring Twenties" TV series.