Perry Mason (HBO)

Watched it all the time when I was a kid

I liked the premiere, but wasn't Mason a defense attorney and not a PI?

So apparently this is an "origin" story prior to attorney work.

Excited to see what they do with Tatiana Maslany and Lithgow.

This thing has been incredible the past three weeks.

Lithgow is great in 4, then the tone shifts in 5 to pivot towards the Mason we know.

Last week, 5 was a spotlight for Della, this week for Drake.

I admit it was slow getting there bit now it feels like a proper mystery/old Mason.

I'd say watch week 4 and decide from there.

My mum is balls deep into this and keeps harping on about the sex and bad language but I DON'T SEE YOU TUNING OUT, MUM.

I assume she liked it if she burned through it that fast.

Two episodes in. Really good so far.

Finally made my way to the end of the season. Really liked it. I enjoyed the way it tried to take the characters of traditional Perry Mason and give them logical backstories as we see Perry, Della Street, and Paul Drake as they fall into their traditional roles. I liked the idea that Perry starts as a PI, because it explains his more investigative instincts we've traditionally seen. And I loved how his arc became that he falls into being a lawyer out of necessity for a client who desperately needed one and nobody would touch with a ten foot pole.

And I especially loved the court scenes. While I'm both amused and bemused at the little "nobody confesses from the stand" potshot they took from traditional Perry Mason court, but it also lays down the groundwork that this Perry Mason isn't about a simple and clean bad guy loses high ground because Perry is just too damn good narrative which probably wouldn't work on today's TV climate (especially not HBO). The court scenes are a brutal back and forth between Perry and Stephen Root, like a boxing match and I am totally here for it.

Minor gripes: While I acknowledge the need to move away from Perry Mason formula, part of the charm of classic Perry Mason is that he is an immovable object in the way of an unstoppable force. He fights until innocence is proven because his clients have nobody to turn to. It's faithful to that to a degree, but this particular trial is left a bit open. The bad guys don't get caught, but rather meet ends that don't really involve Mason's work at all, while his client still isn't entirely in the clear (the possibility of a retrial is left hanging in the open at the end). I think the implication is to be in the same vein as the original Rocky, where the intent is not for him to win but to show he made a dent in a seemingly open-and-shut case which is cause to take notice. But still, it feels slightly underwhelming.

Also, the direction the evangelical shit goes down in the last two episodes...not a fan.

Also, while I think there was enough going on this season to support eight episodes (maybe two could have been cut out), ideally for me just doing one case per season strains my attention span. I'm not a fan of stretch one story out over whatever-the-fuck many episodes that are ordered and the running in place that comes with it. It becomes concerning for me that future seasons will be one case and one mystery each, and that just exhausts me thinking of it. I'd prefer maybe a method of maybe doing mini-arcs and doing maybe two or three stories per season, spanning maybe three episodes each. But that's just me. This serialized crap makes television so fucking tiresome.

One note of "I see what you did there" in the final episode: As Perry, Della, and Paul open their doors at the end their first client is "Eva Griffin" and Della thinks she's a phoney. This is almost the exact way the very first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, begins. Bravo, y'all.