Petrocelli

Petrocelli
Barry Newman as Tony Petrocelli.
Created by	Harold Buchman Sidney J. Furie
Directed by	Irving J. Moore
Starring	Barry Newman Susan Howard Albert Salmi David Huddleston
Composers	Lalo Schifrin (pilot, 2.2)
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	Two
No. of episodes	44 (three unaired) (and one pilot movie) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Edward K. Milkis Thomas L. Miller
Producer	Leonard Katzman
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	48 minutes
Production companies	Miller-Milkis Productions Paramount Network Television
Distributor	CBS Television Distribution
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	September 11, 1974 – March 31, 1976

Petrocelli is an American legal drama which ran for two seasons on NBC from September 11, 1974, to March 31, 1976.^[1]

Plot

Tony Petrocelli was an Italian-American Harvard-educated lawyer, who grew up in South Boston and gave up the big money and frenetic pace of major-metropolitan life to practice in a sleepy city in Arizona called San Remo (filmed in Tucson, Arizona). His wife Maggie and he lived in a house trailer in the country while waiting for their new home to be built (it was never completed over the course of the series). Tony drove a beat-up old pickup truck, always a little too fast. Petrocelli hired Pete Ritter, a local cowboy and ex-cop, as his investigator.

Format

Petrocelli worked as a defense lawyer, and each episode followed a similar format, with the clients apparently certain to be convicted of a crime of which they were innocent until a late-emerging piece of evidence allowed the protagonist to suggest to the jury an alternative possibility. These alternatives were never established as absolute fact, and the trial of the persons onto whom Petrocelli turned the accusation never occurred, but the doubt raised was sufficient to secure the release of his clients.

A technique used in the TV series was showing the actual crime in flashbacks from the perspective of various people involved. The flashbacks, naturally, differed depending on whose recollections were being shown. To maximize the drama, the prosecution's version was always the first flashback shown (i.e. what supposedly happened), then the client's version was presented (what the client remembered happening), then, finally, after finishing his investigation, Petrocelli presented his version (generally meant to be what, in fact, occurred). This final flashback always contained elements of the prosecution's and his client's versions, but with his new-found evidence, it would show both the client's innocence and an explanation as to how and why the prosecution and client's versions differed. In other words, neither side was ever meant to be corrupt or lying, rather, without Petrocelli's new information, both previous versions appeared to be accurate from their respective points of view.

Adaptation

Newman created the role of Petrocelli in a 1970 movie, The Lawyer, which was loosely based on the Sam Sheppard murder case. Diana Muldaur co-starred as his wife Maggie in the 1970 feature film. Petrocelli was produced by Leonard Katzman. In the NBC TV series, Susan Howard played the wife of Tony Petrocelli.

Cast

Episodes

Pilot (1974)

A 90-minute TV movie aired as a pilot on March 16, 1974.^[2][3]

Season 1 (1974–75)

Season 2 (1975–76)

Guest stars

• Anne Archer
• Ned Beatty
• Lucille Benson
• Lynn Borden
• Nancy Criss
• Kim Darby
• Susan Dey
• Harrison Ford
• Ron Foster
• Alan Fudge
• Lynda Day George
• Louis Gossett, Jr.
• Harold Gould
• Mark Hamill
• Robert Hooks
• Julie Kavner
• Sally Kirkland
• Kay Lenz
• Strother Martin
• Gerald McRaney
• Belinda Montgomery
• Lee Montgomery
• James Naughton
• Annette O'Toole
• Della Reese
• Peter Mark Richman
• Robbie Rist
• John Ritter
• Marion Ross
• John Saxon
• Simon Scott
• William Shatner
• Loretta Swit
• Joan Van Ark
• Mitch Vogel
• Cindy Williams
• Noble Willingham
• William Windom

Home media

Visual Entertainment released the complete series on DVD in Region 1 on December 16, 2016.^[4]

Books about the series

Book: "Petrocelli: San Remo Justice: An Episode Guide and Much More," by Sandra Grabman, published 2018 by BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1-62933-205-5.

References

External links

• Petrocelli at IMDb
• Petrocelli at TV.com
• Petrocelli at epguides.com