Public Prosecutor

"Public Prosecutor" is one of the first made for television shows and as such, it's not surprising that it has a weird 17 minute run time. This is because in the early days of TV, shows were not necessarily in 30 or 60 minute time slots. Some were 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. But the problem is that "Public Prosecutor" is a detective style show where the prosecutor (John Howard) and his secretary and a police detective investigate a crime and figure out who to prosecute....and 17 minutes just isn't enough. Because of the short time slot, the solutions to the crimes just came too fast and often with little evidence. And, to get around this, almost invariably the guilty person would blurt out their guilt or pull a gun and betray themselves! Such things almost never happen in real life but on "Public Prosecutor" it's a regular occurrence and seems incredibly contrived and sloppy. It's hard for any writer to succeed given such constraints...and they never really do better than adequacy. Overall, a neat idea for a show but one that just doesn't work.