There is something positively sumptuous about this show. The lighting, the colour palette, the impeccable production value, all of it, so beautiful, so real, so convincing, that you are immediately transported back in time. Everything here is detailed to within an inch of its life. From the wistful typography of the title card, to the intricately designed interiors, Perry Mason is a series that is hellbent on pulling you into its world from the very first minute.
These are the same streets in which Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe cut their teeth. Where the air is thick with intrigue. Where, as HBO’s world-weary tagline for the series reads: “everybody is guilty of something.” And boy, are they.
What begins as an investigation into a kidnapping gone horribly, tragically wrong, soon becomes a complex and twisted mystery involving a grieving mother, a power-hungry district attorney, police corruption, and an evangelical preacher.
It is also a prequel.
That’s right. The Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) we meet in this series isn’t yet the irascible defence attorney we all know and love. Here, he is a hard-drinking shamus, with something of a laissez-faire approach to morality, who has few qualms taking photos of Hollywood stars and starlets in flagrante delicto, and even fewer in blackmailing those who hired him to do so in the first place.
Now I grew up watching Raymond Burr play the part on television. I grew up reading those Erle Stanley Gardner novels. So it took me a hot minute to figure out just what was going on. My first thought was that they completely reimagined the character. Which would have been silly, though not unheard of in Hollywood. (See: Artemis Fowl.) It was only about half way through the first episode when I realised what the show’s creators, Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald, were trying to do.
Perry Mason, like Yoda, like Sherlock Holmes, is a character that appeared in this world fully formed. We have never been told very much about his past. Nor do we know anything regarding his future. He was, like all our heroes of pulp fiction and serialised television, perpetually frozen in time. Occasionally recast, but unchanging in virtue and in character. He was eternal.
When we first meet him in “The Case of the Velvet Claws,” his creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, describes Mason as someone who “gave the impression of being a thinker and a fighter, a man who would work with infinite patience to jockey an adversary into just the right position, and then finish him with one terrific punch.” Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald are interested in showing us how he got there.
The problem with these sorts of stories is that they run the risk of making the character too real. In trying to explain his disposition, in fleshing him out and imbuing him with motive, in making him an actual human being, there is the very real chance that the audience won’t like him as much after all of it is said and done.
I began the series by questioning the need for a gritty origin story to Perry Mason. I figured that if Jones and Fitzgerald really wanted to tell a 1930s hard-boiled detective story, why not just go ahead and tell one? Why force it into an existing intellectual property? Why reboot, of all things, Perry Mason?
As I made my way through these eight episodes, however, it became clear just how much Jones and Fitzgerald love the source material. Their take on the character felt so natural that I always believed that Matthew Rhys would eventually grow up to become Raymond Burr.
They didn’t give me the Perry Mason I expected. They gave me the Perry Mason I didn’t know I needed.
There are other welcome changes too. Mason’s girl Friday, Della Street, is now a tough-as-nails crusader in her own right, and the perfect foil for our hero as he struggles with his moral choices.
Also gone is the potboiler procedural format that our parents so enjoyed. This isn’t a courtroom drama with a case of the week that’s done and dusted over the course an episode. This is a long form whodunnit, with complex characters, and a compelling crime at the heart of its mystery. These eight hours play out very much like a novel.
Robert Downey Jr. was originally set to play Perry Mason (both the Downeys serve as executive producers on the series) but eventually made way for Matthew Rhys. Which was definitely for the best. Sure, RDJ would have brought another layer of prestige to the production, but the younger, hungrier Rhys gives us an incredibly nuanced performance as the washed-up, whiskey soaked, Mason. Couple that with an incredible ensemble cast lead by John Lithgow, Juliet Rylance, and Tatiana Maslany, and it truly makes for some of the best eight hours you’ll see on television this year.
Do I want more? Yes. I really do. So give me a second season HBO.
Perry Mason
HBO, Season 1, 8 episodes
Showrunners: Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald
Cast: Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Tatiana Maslany, John Lithgow, Chris Chalk, Shea Whigham, Stephen Root, Gayle Rankin, Nate Corddry, Veronica Falcón, Jefferson Mays, Lili Taylor, Andrew Howard, Eric Lange, and Robert Patrick
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