The classic character from Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels, who already had several film versions and TV series – the most prevalent, surely, the one that has Raymond Burr in the title role during the 1950s and 1960s – returns in the form of a miniseries for HBO, in this case, played by Matthew Rhys, known by “The Americans”. Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald – who have already produced other dramas for the premium network such as “Westworld” and “Boardwalk Empire” – are responsible for “Perry Mason”, this new approach to the criminal lawyer that, this time, takes us to the changing city of Los Angeles in 1931, a perfect setting for the neo-noir atmosphere posed by director Timothy Van Patten (“Game of Thrones”).
For years, Robert Downey Jr. tried to move Gardner’s protagonist to the big screen, but his superheroic engagements to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) didn’t leave him much free time. The film he imagined didn’t work out, but at least he can appear in the titles of this new adaptation, as executive producer of his eight episodes.” As the rest of the country fights because of the Great Depression, this city is booming! Oil! Olympic Games! Sound cinema! Evangelical fervor! And the kidnapping of a child that ends very, very badly,” says the official synopsis that gives us an idea of where the matter that Mason intends to get involved in comes from. Jones and Fitzgerald focus on the origins of this defense attorney, one of the most legendary in American fiction. “When the case of the decade knocks on your door, Mason’s relentless search for truth reveals a fractured city and, perhaps, a path to redemption for itself.”
The effervescent Los Angeles of the 1930s
Rhys is accompanied by Tatiana Maslany, an influential preacher and the client who hires him, John Lithgow, Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk, Shea Whigham, Stephen Root, Lili Taylor and many others. “Perry Mason” hits the HBO screen on Sunday, June 21, and we just have to wait and enjoy this dark breakthrough.
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