On NBC from 9/10/77 - 1/28/78

12

Solving crimes and having fun, the Red Hand Gang was a group of five pre-teens from the inner city and their dog. Frankie was the oldest and the unofficial leader, with J.R. was the athletic one, Doc was the smart one, Joanne was the tomboy, and 'Frankie's younger brother, Lil Bill, was the the junior member. Their adventures included catching a gang of kidnappers, preventing a jewel heist, and foiling a museum robbery.

Unlike almost all of the other Saturday morning shows, the Red Hand Gang's adventures were serialized into multiple (3 to 5) shows which allowed longer stories. Each episode ended in a cliff hanger ending. In 1995, original producer William P. D'Angelo formed a company called The NETwork which was going to feature four weekly shows on the web. One of the shows was the Red Hand Gang. Unfortunately, not much more information was available, so I don't know if they made an updated version or just used old episodes. Currently, there is no information at all on The NETWork's homepage.

Matthew Laborteaux went on to some success with his role in Little House on the Prairie. Boomer, the dog, later got his own series, Here's Boomer.

For some reason, this show seems to have been more popular in England than the United States. When doing a net search on the show, most of the sites that mentioned it were British-based sites covering children's shows and a good portion of the email I have received about the show comes from the UK.

The show was released on " target="_blank">DVD in 2009.

Air dates, titles and synopsis

(click on images for larger versions)

The show was released on DVD in 2009.

The show was released on DVD in the UK on September 1, 2008. You can order the set from Amazon UK

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