HBO’s Grim, Gruesome Perry Mason Gives the Courtroom Drama a True Detective Makeover

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In the new Perry Mason, the cops are crooked but the system still works.

, I marveled, not for the first time, at the talismanic power of intellectual property: HBO would rather reboot, citing as specific inspiration not even the TV show but the early, pulpier 1930s Erle Stanley Gardner novels, than just make a whole new show about a private dick? I mean, in thisPerry Mason, the famous lawyer, isn’t even a lawyer! But I was slow on the uptake.

Affection is not a feeling Mason much inspires. A hard-drinking, lost WWI veteran, he’s haunted by the trenches and making a sporadic living spying on the sexual contretemps of movie stars. Divorced and estranged from his young son, he lives alone on a family farm that’s being encroached on all sides by an airfield.

It’s to Rhys’ credit that he doesn’t quite work in this environment. He projects just a little too much decency and eagerness to be a seen-it-all nihilist. His no-place newscaster accent sounds as out of place as a viola in a mosh pit. He’s no hangdog California Joe; He sounds like he was born to talk to a jury. And oh right! That’s where the show is headed! The eight-episodes of the series map closely onto the formula for one: half out of court, half in it.

Even in the rough opener though, the show does something structurally wise It tells us who did it. It thus saves itself from the impossible tension of having to satisfyingly “solve” the case and gets to splash around in motive, scheme, cover-ups, and a period Los Angeles that feels big, cruel and vital. Pulled into the case are E.B.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

 

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