Petrocelli
1 9 7 4 - 1 9 7 6 (USA)
46 x 60 minute episodes
This NBC crime drama series revolved around the cases of
underdog lawyer Tony Petrocelli, who had graduated from Harvard
but decided to set up his legal practice in the middle of
wide-open cattle country near the fictional South Western US town
of San Remo.
Petrocelli hired a local cowboy called Pete Ritter as his
investigator and set about taking on cases whether or not his
clients could afford his services. This in turn made it rather
hard for him and his wife, Maggie, to make ends meet (hence the
reason they lived in a trailer while he tried to build their own
house brick by brick).
Local police Lieutenant Ponce - a good friend of Tony's despite
the fact that they found themselves in adversarial positions in
the courtroom - was often involved in investigating the cases Tony
was working on.
An interesting technique used in this series was
showing the actual crime in flashbacks from the perspectives of
the various people involved. The flashbacks, naturally, differed
depending on whose recollections were being shown.
Barry Newman created the role of Petrocelli in a 1970 movie
called The Lawyer, which, in turn, was loosely based on the
Sam Sheppard murder case.
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