During
Comfort TV’s classic TV tour of the 50 states, the legal drama Petrocelli was selected to represent
Arizona. I recently finished my journey via DVD through all 44 episodes of this
1974-1976 series, and though this isn’t really a review site I thought I’d
share a few thoughts while the show is fresh in my mind.
For
the uninitiated, Petrocelli stars
Barry Newman as Anthony J. Petrocelli, a Boston-bred, Harvard educated attorney
who becomes fed up with the big city rat race, and relocates with wife Maggie
(Susan Howard) to the small town of San Remo. He is assisted on his cases by
ex-cop turned investigator Pete Ritter (Albert Salmi).
In
addition to his legal acumen, Tony had two quirks that were part of nearly
every episode. The first was his aversion to parking meters, expressed through
an array of creative tricks that were not always successful. The second was his
decision to build his own house, brick by brick, out in the desert, while he
and his wife lived in a trailer parked on the property. The home was nowhere
near completion when the show was canceled. I like to think they eventually got
around to finishing it.
There
was an obvious fish-out-of-water premise that I expected to be explored more frequently;
Tony, the Italian in his shiny dark three-piece suits, didn’t mix naturally
with the blue-collar, denim-clad locals. But such culture-clashes were
surprisingly rare.
Instead,
there were three successive phases of Petrocelli
explored through 44 shows, suggesting a network and creative team struggling to
find the right winning formula.
The “Yet Another
Version” Phase
The
first and best of these dominates the show’s first season, positioning Petrocelli within the tradition of
crusading attorneys and courtroom climaxes.
A
murder is committed in the opening scene, and someone is arrested that the cops
believe they’ve got dead to rights. Tony takes the case after meeting with the
accused and deciding that he or she is not guilty. He later shares his
confidence with the district attorney, who will then casually mention evidence Tony
did not know about (“Oh, your client didn’t tell you? We found his fingerprints
all over the murder weapon”).
But
just as the outlook seems dire, at some point during the trial Tony will say
something like “With the court’s permission I’d like to take you back to the
night of the murder, and present yet another version of what may have
happened.”
Inexplicably, the prosecution does not object, or ask the judge to
tell opposing counsel to save any speeches for his closing statement. Tony's re-enactment
that exposes the real guilty party is so convincing that the judge stops
the trial without even giving the case to a jury.
The “Fighting Attorney”
Phase
Between
seasons one and two, somebody decided Petrocelli
needed more action. Thus, in addition to defending his clients, Tony now had to
defend himself while being chased by helicopters, having his camper run off the
road, getting shot at and getting jumped in biker bars.
The “Oh, @&%$ it,
let’s just make him Mannix” Phase
It must have been decided that the action scenes were working, because in the last few
episodes Tony was so busy running for his life he sometimes never saw the
inside of a courtroom.
Through
all of these changes, the series could have relied on the relationship between
Tony and Maggie to ground each episode, but sadly their scenes together are
among the shows’ least compelling.
You know that wonderful chemistry shared by
Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers in Hart
to Hart? That’s not here with Barry Newman and Susan Howard. It’s not
Sonny-and-Cher-after-the-divorce bad; there’s just no heat.
Fortunately
the series did have one consistent joy for Comfort TV fans, and that was an amazing
collection of guest stars as defendants, witnesses and not-so-innocent
bystanders.
“Edge
of Evil” features William Shatner and Harrison Ford – where else can you see
Captain Kirk and Han Solo in the same show? Star
Wars fans will also enjoy spotting Mark Hamill in two episodes.
There’s
Rick Nelson in “Music to Die By,” performing one of the best songs from his
country-rock phase (“One Night Stand”), playing a singer managed by
gravelly-voiced David Doyle. And there’s Susan Dey, still looking Partridge-y,
before she went blond and brittle on L.A.
Law (“The Falling Star”).
John
Ritter was a client, as was Scatman Crothers, Mitch Vogel, Ned Beatty, Anne
Francis, Denver Pyle and the aforementioned Stefanie Powers. Mark Goddard, Elinor
Donahue, Cindy Williams, Barbara Luna, Joan Van Ark, Tim Matheson and Katherine
Helmond are among the familiar faces that pop up in smaller roles.
As
courtroom drama, Petrocelli is not up
to the standard set by Perry Mason or
The Defenders or even Judd for the Defense. As a whodunit, it
mixes a few genuinely clever twists with mysteries so obvious you’ll have them
solved in the first ten minutes. I still enjoyed most of my time with the show,
but it falls just short of having that ‘re-watchability’ factor that is
necessary for a permanent place in my collection. Of course, your mileage may
vary.