Back in the 1950s, Reed Hadley starred in two popular TV shows that were incredibly similar..."Racket Squad" and "Public Defender". Despite being on opposite sides of the law in the two shows, Hadley's stiff delivery make it very easy to mix up the two programs. I don't entirely blame the shows or Hadley...this was in the early days of TV and it's obvious here they still needed to work out some of the dramatic kinks in the shows. However, in this installment of "Public Defender" ("Your Witness"), it's even stagier, more stiff and incredibly anticlimactic.
This show is about a case built almost entirely on circumstantial evidence. A man is found dying and next to be body is the defendant. Witness after witness fail to connect him with the murder yet again and again the witnesses seem to have concluded this stranger was a killer. About the only interesting thing about it is seeing a couple very familiar TV faces, Parley Baer ("The Andy Griffith Show" as well as being the head Keebler elf on TV commercials) and Virginia Gregg (a common guest on "Dragnet"). The end of the show is baffling and strange and the show seems almost like we're watching a read-through and not an actual TV drama. Flat and uninteresting...when it clearly SHOULD have been the opposite.