Petrocelli

"Petrocelli" is a lawyer show that was on NBC during the 1974-76 seasons. It was based on a movie called "The Lawyer" (1970), which also starred Barry Newman as Anthony Petrocelli.

Petrocelli is a Harvard educated lawyer who inexplicably moved to rural Arizona (it was filmed in Tucson but the show never said it was in this town...and Tucson was much, much smaller in 1974). Why he moved there and why his wife supported this move is something the show never really talked about in any detail.

Each week, Petrocelli defends someone for a murder that they invariably didn't commit. The notion of a lawyer only defending innocent people is something this show and "Perry Mason" promote...and I am sure real life lawyers find this very funny. Often, Petrocelli gets people to impeach themselves on the witness stand...admitting they did the killing--something that just doesn't happen in real life. But more often he introduces reasonable doubt by proposing an alternate theory about how and who committed the killing. And, invariably they are acquitted. The perfect lawyer with a perfect record part was ridiculous and had the show gone beyond two seasons, I don't know how they could have continued in this vein.

So is it any good? Yes...and quite enjoyable despite it's heavy reliance on lawyer cliches. But a few other things kept it from being better. Not only was Petrocelli always right but he was often shot at, threatened and/or beaten up and never used a body guard. Again...this is a cliche and cliches are reasons I never thought it was among the very best shows of its type...but it is fun to watch and many episodes can be found on YouTube.

By the way, if you watch you may notice that Petrocelli parks pretty much anywhere and couldn't care less about parking laws. I can only assume this was added to the show to make him appear more like he was from Boston (which he's supposed to be), as the city is notorious for double-parkers.

BearManor Media has very recently published "Petrocelli: An Episode Guide and Much More," ISBN 9781629332055.

My name is Tod Persellin - my family lived at 515 avenida de palmas in Tucson - not sure exact date of the scene shoot, but the Petrocelli show used our home for the episode that aired Mar 13, 1975

Anyway, I had been out in our backyard playing wall ball at the time - if they shot it in 75 I was 10 - for some reason, I didn't know they were shooting at the time - anyway, I went into the house thru our kitchen backdoor and made my way to the front of the house (wondering why it was so quiet, where everyone was) - low an behold, once I hit the living room, there was a HUGE party going on in there! The actors and actresses sure were surprised to see me - there was a huge cake, and they said "hey kid, want some cake"? I think someone even said "you're gonna be on tv" lol - they were all very nice about it, laughing it up, and I got cake out of it too!

Turns out I had botched the scene - the film crew was in the front driveway, they were into the shot already - my parents (also outside around where the crew was) told me later the director shouted "who the hell let that @#^%&@% kid in there"! True story

The Star or Citizen wrote a story about the scene they did at our house - it was titled "Petrocelli Visits The Persellins", but there was no mention of my cameo! One of the show artists did a cat drawing for us (we had several cats back then) - anyway, a neat little piece of movie trivia that hasn't been shared (it took me this long to go thru every episode to find the one they did at our home)

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.

Spun-off from the movie "The Lawyer" (qv), "Petrocelli" is a great, one hour courtroom drama starring Barry Newman as the displaced New York Lawyer in the desert, Tony Petrocelli. In the late 1990s there was something of a revival in its popularity in the UK, when the BBC began screening it daily in their early afternoon (2pm) slot. It was certainly more entertaining than the show it replaced, "Quincy MD", although perhaps it did not scale the heights reached by the champion of that particular timeslot, "Columbo". "Petrocelli" became the all time favourite tv show of my University friend and housemate Neil, who would often miss lectures to catch the daily afternoon dose of legal drama. I wouldn't go that far, but I'd still say it's great entertainment. When compared to some of the lame legal dramas out there today ("The Practice", anyone?) the writing here is positively superb.