Well Deserved Praise

Strictly average movie

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

I enjoyed this show too. I was a little kid who watched a lot of TV but this show really stood out. It was funny and well written with quality work from Swofford et al. Baggetta was a real find too playing a real street smart, smart aleck type... an urban Poirot! Seven Ann was the cute kid... Phillips was, if memory serves, delectable as the female lead. Really too bad this one didn't go the distance... ahead of its time perhaps .. years before Goodfellas or the Sopranos would lead to actors like Joe Pesci or movies like Analyze This would allow actors with a distinctly urban Italian attitude and speech to find their services in high demand. Too bad a good guy of this type didn't fly... though if you're a fan of Hill Street Blues.. Baggetta's role as a corrupt cop is one of the most chilling portrayals this side of Ray Sharkey or Dennis Franz!

The Eddie Capra Mysteries concerned an attorney working in a white shoe law firm who apparently was not interested in trial fees. Vincent Baggetta would much rather solve the murder than win an acquittal in court. He must have cost his firm millions of dollars, but for a brief while gave viewers an enjoyable show.Young assistant Michael Horton and secretary Wendy Phillips aided and abetted Baggetta in his pursuit of justice. Phillips and Baggetta were an unspoken item, something in fact being pushed by Phillips's daughter Seven Anne McDonald. Ken Swofford was one of the partners who had a mixed attitude about Baggetta's sleuthing on company time.I remember the show because my mother was a devoted fan of TV mystery shows going back to the original Perry Mason series. She watched them all, Ironside, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Murder She Wrote, Matlock and you'll note all of these had some pretty long runs. This was the only one of these type of shows she liked that flopped.Why it flopped who knows because the episodes were every bit as good as the ones on the above named hits. Vincent Baggetta is a very good actor who specializes in playing a lot of urban types on both sides of the law. This series was his big chance at TV stardom though and he never got another.If the episodes of The Eddie Capra Mysteries are ever shown and hopefully were saved somewhere, you'll see what I mean.