Perry Mason 2020

Not your parents’ “Perry Mason” so the tagline for this 8 part HBO series goes, which is fine with me. I hated the mid 50’s t.v. series with Raymond Burr which bored this 9 year old to tears, so there was no love lost. Sunday nights I would leave the living room when my parents tuned in to Perry and didn’t come back in until I heard Fred Steiner’s pounding theme music which to me was the best part of the show. The new series is not great, sad as that is, but it’s pretty damn good and should keep Noir, old L.A. fans, movie lovers and depression era afficionados perky and happy for most of this series. 

It doesn’t hurt that the cast is great especially Mathew Rhys who is Welsh by birth and  has an impeccable American accent and plays Mason with a worn, torn and sad display. Our Perry is not a lawyer (not yet that is)  but a private dick working for the ever present but always wonderful John Lithgow who plays the lawyer man. His assistant is Della Street who is sassy and rough and tumble so unlike lady like Barbara Hale, she is also a lesbian oh my. Beautifully played by another Brit Juliet Rylance with a hard midwestern accent.

The series opens with a fast and penny dreadful plot concerning the kidnapping and murder  of a 2 year old child which will recall the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping especially since the series is set in 1932, and is ghastly and grim. There are other plot twists that are based on real life people including  Aimee Semple McPherson the Pentecostal  Evangelist  phony who took over the country with her pseudo               religious crap in the early 30’s and even brought her show to the Capitol Theatre in Times Sq. Here in a Jean Harlow blonde wild hairdo she is played by Tatiana Maslany a young actress I had never seen before and is watched and handled by her mom Birdy played by the great Lili Taylor. The large supporting cast are terrific and especially notable for me was Shea Whigham who plays Mason’s sidekick and underpaid partner in private dick land and Veronica Falcon who plays a Latino airplane flyer who owns an airfield next to Mason’s “Farm” and is sometimes his main squeeze. A whole series could be made just on her character alone.

The plot can at times be confusing, there is just so much of it, and a little more pruning might have helped. I also liked Chris Chalk who plays a lonely and racially put upon black cop named Paul Drake who knows more of the plot then we certainly do. There are loose strings all over the place, and someone should be held accountable, maybe creator and director Timothy Van Patten. The art direction and the look is beautiful and not overdone, and the wonderful jazz score by the great Terence Blanchard is smoky, boozy and memorable. He even pays tribute to the original theme over the closing credits of the last episode. A second season is coming.