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.

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

"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.

Of all the imported US cops and lawyers series shown on British TV in the early 70's, including Kojak, Columbo, Rockford, Cannon, McMillan and Wife, Banacek, Harry O and McCloud (I can't remember anymore!), this is the one I liked best. Barry Newman stars as the eponymous title character, apparently reprising an earlier film role, a smart-suited, sharp-witted Italian-extraction lawyer building his own home out in the country along with his ever-supportive wife (Susan Howard), who becomes the go-to guy for a seemingly never- ending array of almost-beyond-doubt guilty defendants who he then proceeds to unerringly got off in the last reel thanks to his Sherlock Holmes-like deduction skills. In this he was assisted by his loyal, if somewhat slow assistant, Cowboy Pete.

The shows took on the whodunit format of Columbo, invariably presenting an open and shut case against the plaintiff only for Petrocelli to turn things around with his own reconstruction of the actual events, usually after he's put himself and / or his wife and / or big Pete in harm's way first to get at the truth. That's the good thing about a whodunit, it keeps you guessing and watching to the very end.

Formulaic it may have been, but Newman played the title role with some flair and some flint garnering good support from Howard who was far from the shrinking wife in the background. I remember in particular Newman's habit of saying "No further questions" after he'd roasted a hostile witness on the stand, plus did he ever finish building that house of theirs out in the back of beyond?

Anyway, for me this is another of those vintage shows from my youth that I loved at the time and which I'm pleased to say, dodgy fashion aside, holds up well to watching again today.

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)