Perry Mason is being reimagined in a younger, scrappier incarnation in a gritty new
HBO show. But who are the other detectives we need the backstory on?
By all accounts, the new Perry Mason is vastly different from the old Perry Mason. The Perry Mason we all know was a cool-headed attorney, rarely wrong in his convictions, who could chase down the truth without so much as
BREAKING sweat. Played by Raymond Burr, Mason solved 271 mysteries on TV and a further 26 in television movies. The man was an unbeatable instrument of virtue.
But things are different now. HBO has reimagined Perry Mason in classic Prestige TV style. There is no episodic slickness to be found here. This is a younger, scrappier, Depression-era Mason – more Chinatown than CBS – played by a version of Matthew Rhys who looks as if he has just been thrown down the world’s most ostentatiously dangerous concrete staircase. It spreads a single case across eight episodes. It is both darker and grittier than its predecessor.