Petrocelli

Barry Newman brought a Jewish profile to a Boston Italian lawyer and pulled it off perfectly. Great pathos on Mr. Newman's part, especially once a week when he would sneer up his lips on one side of his face and say, in a long drawn out drawl,...'yyeaahhh', "Pete" (his P.I., the Underrated Albert Salmi... or "Maggie" if he was talking to his wife)..this kid's innocent...we'll prove it." And his perfect presentation at the end of each episode..."Your Honor, I would like to offer yet ANOTHER version of the events of that night...) It was a great show which, just like "Harry O" in the same time frame, was lost in the mass of more popular Crime Dramas and prematurely cancelled.

I think the best lessons "Petrocelli" teaches us are that 1) things aren't always as they seem, and 2) there's a good reason to presume a person innocent until proven guilty - because he just might be innocent, after all. This is a cast that worked very well together, and the writing, too, was excellent. I liked the fact that we would see the crime being committed from different perspectives. I don't know if "Petrocelli" was the first show to ever do that, but it sure kept me tuned in every week. It would be wonderful if TV Land would run this series again.

I, too, loved this TV series when it originally aired and am now rewatching every episode on the DVD set that was released last year. My publisher asked me to write a book about "Petrocelli," and I'm happy to oblige. I'd love to have your help, though. Please tell me the episodes you liked best, your favorite characters, and/or how the series impacted your life. Since I can't give you my e-mail address here, the managers of this website would probably be fine with your posting these opinions about the series here, in the review section of IMDb. Thanks much.

Petrocelli is probably the first TV legal drama I watched and I still have fond memories of how Petrocelli was constantly working on his house, but sadly building ceased after the series was axed after only two seasons. Please, Petrocelli needs to be rebooted. I suggest Adam Sandler play the lead role, with Drew Barrymore as his wife.

I was in high school when this show was new, and I got interested only when it was already in its final of 2 seasons. I remember how they would dramatize several differing accounts of what had taken place, but I always thought the trial/hearing was too easily resolved when Tony P. gave his version. And it wasn't even in the 'final summation' stage. He just said something like, "I'm going to share with the court the only way this crime could have happened..." and the case would be dismissed. That's just too simplistic, and it's hard to believe any judge would let him do that-- and the prosecutor does not even object.

There were some running gags and sub themes that helped make the show interesting. Unlike Perry Mason, we see quite a bit of Petrocelli's after-hours. I don't even remember if it was explained why he lived where he did, so I assume he just wanted to be away from the big city, have land and build a house of his own; which he and Maggie did, though not apparently with much speed. If they had gotten more done on that house I wonder if that would have made any difference in the show's popularity. Maggie (Susan Howard) was his secretary/bookkeeper, as well as his wife, and she managed to get into jeopardy as much as Tony and Pete (his easy-going, less scrupulous cowboy investigator) did. And he liked root beer, was sensitive about his name being mispronounced as PETroSELLee instead of PETroCHELLee, correcting anybody who did that, or else deliberately mispronouncing THEIR name. And he often alluded to his Italian heritage and being brought up poor; which often compelled him to sympathize with poorer clients. The town where he kept his office was San Remo, another Italian reference. In one episode he told Maggie that his mother could prepare meatballs in 10 minutes, implying that she should be able to do that. Then she brought his lunch in a bag, he took it out and there was a can of meatballs and a note, "Here's your 10-minute meatballs." Not a belly-laugh, but amusing if you know the characters.

But Barry Newman and Susan Howard were very good actors. I wish the series had lasted 5 years, so it would have been syndicated in more markets and for longer. I would probably have every available episode on tape or disk it that had been the case.