I liked it but it was slow. It’s set in 1932 when Perry is young and struggling to find work. He lives on a farm with 2 cows and there is also a small runway. He is working on case as a private detective. He also takes pictures to blackmail famous Hollywood people.
I’m interested. I’m already watching “City of Angels” which is set in the same era. It will be interesting comparing set designs.
I really liked it. I felt the story (so far) is great and I enjoyed the pacing. I also thought the casting was excellent.
2 thumbs up from me.
I unexpectedly had the opportunity to see the pilot and I took it. Despite invoking some familiar LA historical tropes (e.g., Sister Aimee McPherson, Fatty Arbuckle), it nevertheless sustained my interest throughout and generally exceeded my expectations. I found it a far better evocation of its period than City of Angels, despite the conspicuous repetition of tight exterior shots (probably to keep art direction simpler and cheaper). I also appreciated the casting of some actors who looked more like real people than actors. While the lead is a low-life loser, he was neither grating nor obnoxious and there is an underlying confidence built-in that he will prove worthy despite his flaws.
I have no idea WTF this show has to do with traditional notions of Perry Mason apart from using some of the names from that franchise (there is no way the real Mr. Mason would ever have a tattoo). In that sense, I would compare it to the film version of The Long Goodbye (1973), in which Elliot Gould plays a detective who happens to be named Philip Marlowe, but who is clearly not the Philip Marlowe of Chandler’s fiction or of previous movie incarnations.
I would be willing to watch more episodes, but alas, opportunity appears unlikely to smile upon me again.
I did not realize until this show was advertised that Perry Mason started out in novels and then went to radio shows and TV and movies. In the novels they don’t say much about his early life so I guess the producers of this show just made him into a down and out guy.
It sort of reminded me of Babylon Berlin. Same “shockingly grotty pilot!!” approach, not that that is bad.
In the books, Perry Mason starts out more bent than he is on the old TV show, sometimes willing to do a little breaking and entering if necessary, occasionally skirting the edge of the law. The earlier books also have more of a detective fiction feel. Over time, he becomes the more legalistic, courtroom-focused character familiar from the TV show.
It’s just the first episode but so far I see a lot more style than substance.
Posting mostly to subscribe to the thread (haven’t figured out yet how to subscribe without posting). I saw the first episode and am interested enough to continue. I don’t think I ever saw the TV show, so I don’t really care if they’ve changed the character from a lawyer. (Although one of the recaps I read said that the character was, early in his life, a private investigator before becoming an attorney.)
I saw a few very vague similarities to Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, mostly in the Los Angeles setting and 1930s period along with the big church connection.
Previous thread: Robert Downey Jr. as Perry Mason [EDIT: Without RDJ] - #5 by Elendil_s_Heir
I liked it, and will watch the rest of the series (it’ll be eight episodes in all). Lots of good Thirties LA atmosphere. And some clever touches - a diner called Ptomaine Tommy’s, and Robert Patrick (perhaps best known as an LAPD-cop-impersonating killer robot in Terminator 2) plays a wealthy man who says… he doesn’t trust the LAPD!
Good to see Angels Flight, the famous funicular railway. From Wiki: “The only color episode of the original Perry Mason TV series, the February 1966 episode “The Case of the Twice-Told Twist,” has a brief scene in the opening act, where Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) ride Angels Flight.”
Interesting plot and some major obstacles are set up for Mason to overcome, including crooked cops and uncooperative witnesses. The dead baby with its eyelids stitched open was pretty creepy - but it might have been better if we didn’t see it at all, but only Mason’s and others’ reactions to it.
A fine cast, including the lead actor, and John Lithgow is excellent as always.
I’m kinda really enjoying this. I like the setting and the style, but especially as a procedural (although we know a lot about whodunnit already.) Not sure how the evangelist – Aimee Semple McPherson knock-off – is going to figure into this.
I had a guess about the conspirator who jumped off the roof. I thought he was going to turn out to be the mom’s brother – she said she had a brother, who we haven’t met yet – but apparently he was mom’s lover instead. I’ll give myself half-credit.
And Paul Drake, Mason’s investigator from the TV show, turns up – so one presumes that he’ll wind up allied with Mason soon.
I gave it a shot, it’s just not for me. I can see people liking this, it’s a pretty good production, just not for me.
Just saw the second episode and I’m digging it.
I like the old-fashioned opening title card. Some intense scenes of trench warfare - guess Perry was an Army infantry captain. And killing three badly-wounded soldiers to end their suffering (the last of whom seemed about to ask him not to)… wow.
I like Officer Drake - a lot of other cops would’ve just shot the old guy when he came out of the apartment building brandishing a rifle and wouldn’t put it down. Nice scene of his homelife, too. Good to see Stephen Root as the slimy publicity-hound DA.
What did Emily, the grieving mom, put in Sister Alice’s hand? Dramatic but absurd, I thought, that she would be arrested as she left her son’s funeral - that’s the kind of thing that would turn the public against the DA and the police. Easy enough to arrest her much more quietly at home later.
How did PM know to go to the house of Emily’s lover, the third kidnapper, where he found the “suicide”'s body and the hidden love letters?
A costuming quibble: LAPD shields were silver back then, except for detectives, I think.
Great final shot of PM walking down the bustling street strung with electric lights.
They didn’t connect the dots explicitly, but: it’s the address that went with the phone number that Emily had been calling repeatedly.
I have no idea why PM decided that the corpse’s mangled mouth needed to be probed (eww!) so he could discover that it was missing the dentures that Drake found later at the scene.
Wait, the suicide in that house wasn’t Emily’s lover? I didn’t get that the third kidnapper was the lover; perhaps I need to see the episode again. And I thought he went to that house because it was the location of the phone number that Emily called from the restaurant.
No, we’re all on the same page. What we know so far, it looks like: the 3rd kidnapper (who was very emotional in the scene in their hideout, calling the dead baby “Charlie” – so he had a connection, and was apparently Emily’s lover) was wounded in the shootout with Ennis, the dirty cop, and jumps off the building. His dentures fall out. Ennis takes the body to Lover Boy’s house, and stages a suicide. PM figures out the phone number Emily has been calling, uses a reverse directory to get the address, and winds up at Lover Boy’s house and discovers the body, the “suicide note”, and the love letters.
Yes, I think that’s all correct. Thanks.
The last few months I’ve been reading the books, though out of order because they can be hard to find. Yesterday the very first book came on library reserve, The Case of the Velvet Claws, and while he is a lawyer from day one, not only is he up for some breaking in entering, but is also willing to manufacture evidence, though for various reasons he isn’t able to pull it off.
He also engages in a lot of chest beating and declamatory dialogue that disappears later in the series.
Hmmm, odds her lover/kidnapper ends up being the baby’s actual father?
Yep, could be.