Friday, January 19, 2024

FFB: Randy Johnson on THE TRIALS OF O'BRIEN by Robert L. Fish (Rediscovered)

And, unsurprisingly, Randy also put this review up



Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2014

I was completely unfamiliar with this series. Understandable. 
I was fifteen at the time it aired and mostly watched and read 
science fiction. It only ran for one season and I read elsewhere 
that Peter Falk said he thought more of it than he did his signature 
show Columbo. Daniel J. O'Brien is a lawyer that likes to play the
horses and throw the dice, gamble in general, and is not very 
successful at any of them. He owes everybody, has an ex-wife that 
constantly carps about late alimony in the form of bounced checks, 
and a secretary he's always borrowing money from and is behind 
on her salary. Fortunately for him, he seems to bring out the soft 
spot in women and stays on their good side. Just barely.

O'Brien gets unwittingly involved in a scheme by an old client of his. 
Benny Kalen is a three time loser. That he only got a few years on 
his last conviction instead of a dozen makes no impression. O'Brien 
should have got him off, therefore he didn't deserve to get paid.

O'Brien gets suckered by Benny's wife into being at a bar late one 
night while Benny and a confederate are pulling a stick-up job on 
a finance company that had just opened next door.

Thinks go wrong and there's a dead body. Benny's parole officer had 
warned O'Brien that he heard his name mentioned and believes he's 
in on the job.

Our lawyer is forced to defend his former client, who swears the man 
was already dead and the safe broken into when he entered the office, 
in order to clear his name.

Robert L. Fish wrote this one and is the reason I gave it a try. 
His novel Mute Witness became the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt.

4 comments:

  1. Back when I first discovered it, only two or three mostly partial episodes were up, but they were rather promising...thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Though now, alas, I see only about five near-complete or complete episodes, in varying degrees of video fidelity, currently posted. That is still more than ten years ago...but not most of the 22 episodes CBS broadcast in 1965-66...

    ReplyDelete

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