Petrocelli

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Petrocelli
Format	Drama/Crime
Created by	Harold Buchman Sidney J. Furie
Starring	Barry Newman Susan Howard Albert Salmi David Huddleston
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	45
Production
Executive producer(s)	Edward K. Milkis Thomas L. Miller
Running time	60 min.
Broadcast
Original channel	NBC
Original run	September 11, 1974 – March 31, 1976
External links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Petrocelli was a legal drama which ran on NBC from September 11, 1974 to March 3, 1976. It had 48 episodes.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Format 3 Adaption 4 Cast 5 External links

[edit] Plot

Tony Petrocelli was an Italian-American Harvard-educated lawyer grew up in South Boston who gave up the big money and frenetic pace of major-metropolitan life to practice in a sleepy city in the American Southwest called San Remo (filmed in Tucson, Arizona). He and his wife Maggie lived 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. Tony hired Pete Ritter, a local cowboy, as his investigator.

[edit] Format

Petrocelli worked as a defense lawyer, and each episode followed a similar format, with the client 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 there was never any indication of a trial of the person onto whom Petrocelli turned the accusation, but the doubt raised was sufficient to secure the release of his client.

An interesting 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.

[edit] Adaption

Newman created the role of Petrocelli in a 1970 movie, The Lawyer, which was loosely based on the Sam Sheppard murder case.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Barry Newman	Anthony J. Petrocelli
Susan Howard	Maggie Petrocelli
Albert Salmi	Pete Ritter
David Huddleston	Lt. Joun Ponce

[edit] External links

• Petrocelli at the Internet Movie Database