Petrocelli

1974

Seasons & Episodes

  • 2
  • 1
  • 0

7.2| 0h30m| en
Synopsis

Petrocelli is an American legal drama which ran for two seasons on NBC from September 11, 1974 to March 31, 1976. Tony Petrocelli is an Italian-American Harvard-educated lawyer who gave up the big money and frenetic pace of major-metropolitan life to practice in a sleepy city in the American Southwest. He and wife Maggie live in a trailer in the country while waiting for their new house to be built, and travel around in a beat-up old pickup truck. For a quiet rural area, Petrocelli seems to have no trouble running into his share of murderers to defend.

Director

Producted By

Paramount Television Studios

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Trailers & Clips

Reviews

Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.
Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
jwells97 I, too, loved this TV series when it originally aired and am now rewatching every episode on the DVD set that was released last year. My publisher asked me to write a book about "Petrocelli," and I'm happy to oblige. I'd love to have your help, though. Please tell me the episodes you liked best, your favorite characters, and/or how the series impacted your life. Since I can't give you my e-mail address here, the managers of this website would probably be fine with your posting these opinions about the series here, in the review section of IMDb. Thanks much.
jc-osms 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.
Jennifer Reynolds I remember one episode where Petrocelli took a parking ticket off of another parked car, then put the ticket on his own car he just parked so he wouldn't get a ticket. I thought it was hilarious because I had been doing the same thing at the college I was going to. I found I could park right next to the building where my engineering class was just by taking the tickets off other cars and putting them under my windshield wiper. It worked every time. I only did this when I was running late and now when I look back (that was in the seventies) I might have caused other people to get two tickets instead of one. But back then the fines for parking tickets were just a dollar. It was cool seeing Petrocelli do the same thing I did. I wonder if he saw me parking one day and then stole my idea.
Cal-16 I think the best lessons "Petrocelli" teaches us are that 1) things aren't always as they seem, and 2) there's a good reason to presume a person innocent until proven guilty - because he just might be innocent, after all. This is a cast that worked very well together, and the writing, too, was excellent. I liked the fact that we would see the crime being committed from different perspectives. I don't know if "Petrocelli" was the first show to ever do that, but it sure kept me tuned in every week. It would be wonderful if TV Land would run this series again.