While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Before he was a rumpled LAPD detective, Peter Falk played a rumpled New York City defense attorney experiencing how the other half of the criminal justice system worked. For one season only Peter Falk starred in The Trials Of O'Brien.He may have been a bit rumpled around the edges and wore suits he might have slept in to court, but Daniel J. O'Brien was pretty quick witted and thought fast on his feet. It wasn't gradual insinuation the way Lt.Columbo moves in on a suspect.O'Brien had his problems with an ex-wife and was always late with the alimony check. But somehow Joanna Barnes was patient. It kind of reminded me of that classic William Powell/Jean Arthur film The Ex- Mrs. Bradford. Great friends, but can't live together.Sad that The Trials Of O'Brien could not find an audience. Hopefully someone will package and market that one season of shows with some great guest stars in their salad days.

This was one of my "must-watch" TV shows in the early 60s, along with The Defenders, Route 66, and the vanished summer replacement Diagnosis: Unknown. I'm going to pretty much echo everything said here already; I have a couple of prized DVDs of several TOOB episodes I got from an outfit called Robert's Hard to Find Videos, and the shows pretty much hold up all these years later. (Of course I'm easy to please, what with Falk's charismatic performances plus the fun of seeing regular working New York actors who later became screen icons or quasi-icons, like Martin Sheen, Herschel Bernardi, Alan Alda, Philip Bosco and Elaine Stritch.) Some of the plot contrivances absolutely strain credulity, possibly due to the pace of production and turnaround; an hour is a lot of time for a writer to fill, and sometimes it shows. But the acting is uniformly superb, the NY locations are memorable, Falk is a pleasure, Joanna Barnes is a dream, Ms. Stritch is a hoot, and it's all just great fun. (A word on the DVDs: most of the episodes seem to have been shot directly off a TV screen by a 16mm camera, and copied many times since, and the quality isn't exactly archival--glarey video and occasionally "underwater"-sounding audio. But everything's there, and the quality's perfectly acceptable for us TOOB diehards, and really--where else ya gonna go to find these episodes?) The overall experience is still, as O'Brien says, "Terrific…jus' terrific."

After CBS killed that wonderful show, Slattery's People, they replaced it with a very different high quality show, The Trials of O'Brien. Peter Falk played O'Brien, an flamboyant Shakespeare quoting defense attorney with a fondness for playing the pony's and a knack for solving crimes. Elaine Strich played his secretary, and the shows featured a cornucopia of great guest stars. Like Slattery's People , it was a rating flop that was well-liked by the critics and a handful of intelligent fans. Like Slattery's People, it molders in the CBS vaults, remembered only by a handful of aficionados. Amazingly, Peter Falk thinks it was better than Columbo. Unfortunately, we will probably never know. Wh, oh why, doesn't CBS turn copies of all its old shows over to UCLA or the Paley center, let alone release them on DVD?

It's been a long time ago, but I know this was a critical success. When it was canceled, it caused a "save this show" letter-writing campaign, to no avail. It was about a rather deadbeat, but smart lawyer, fending off bill collectors and while taking on even more deadbeat clients. Falk did his usual great job and I think some of this character spilled over to Columbo. I would love to see if any of the 13 was it? episodes still exist. I would buy them all!