Lore has it that Erle Stanley Gardner loved Raymond Burr as Perry Mason. But the Mason of the books was a much more roguish character than Burr could ever pull off with his dour face. Yes, I am saying the author was wrong about his own character. Or at least, the interpretation of the character you’re going to get with an actor like Burr de-emphasizes what a rascal Mason is.
Mason is very conscientious about serving the interests of his client. But a lot of other rules, as every character in the novels point out again and again, are there to be bent or broken, only to use his extensive knowledge of those same rules to get him out of the trouble he put himself in. He’s not a shyster, but he is a rogue. Robert Downey Jr. is a lot closer to how I see the character.
I do wonder what they would do about Della Street. It’s clear in the novels that she and Mason are in love, but they can’t get together because being his wife means that she isn’t allowed to be involved in the work he loves so much. As a modern reader, especially as Mason’s stories extend into the 70’s, I find this explanation getting thinner and thinner. Yes, of course she can be married to him and still be an integral part of his adventures. She doesn’t have to become a housewife just because she’s married.
But apparently, the show will be set in the 1930’s. That’s a tricky issue, because like all serial fiction, there was a weird time dilation in the stories. They begin with the end of prohibition and the last novels trickled out with the end of the Vietnam War. I myself might have chosen to normalize the entire series in some 50’s like world. Nor did I object when the Nero Wolfe series on A&E basically condensed all periods of the novels into one setting. But I guess I would like to see them just set it in the 30’s because fuck it. Go for broke.
Downey is off the case, as it were, and the lead role has been recast with Matthew Rhys (The Americans, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and others). It’ll premiere June 21.
Meanwhile, Showtime (a premium cable channel that competes with HBO) is airing Penny Dreadful: City of Angels starting on April 26. It’s set in 1938 Los Angeles (vs 1932 Los Angeles for the Perry Mason miniseries). I’ve noticed that these two channels often have vaguely similar shows at about the same time. (Roadies on Showtime vs Vinyl on HBO, both about the music business, or I’m Dying Up Here on Showtime vs Crashing on HBO, both about stand-up comedians.)
Very vaguely in this case. Perry Mason is straightforward murder-mystery with a clever lawyer as the protaganist. Penny Dreadful is supernatural-horror-thriller with monsters as protaganists.
Just have to wait and see how it turns out. I saw the original TV show before reading any of the books so Perry Mason is burned into my brain as Raymond Burr so someone new has to do the part well. I have seen the early movies made with a couple of different actors, one was even redone in the TV series, and the very different actors playing Mason did alright. It’s the self confidence of the character that shines through, everyone wants a lawyer who is as certain of your innocence as he is, not to mention having that fantastic win-loss record.
He definitely looks, from the HBO trailer, like a down-at-the-heels Thirties street lawyer rather than the assured, prosperous smoothie Raymond Burr played in the Fifties.
funny story … Raymond burr in an interview back in the early years of the original series said the one thing he didn’t like about the show was the endings always “confused the helll out of him " and he never understood how mason figured it out”
so they actually hired someone from a law school to explain them to him so if you see “legal consultant x” in the end credist that’s what they did …
Fascinating idea. But the Burr series was, for mine, kind of repetitious. Standard trope was his cross-examination getting people to confess from the witness box… Modern viewers know this never happens. They can’t have just one Hamilton Burger who always loses, because again modern audiences won’t buy it IMHO. So will there be a series of increasingly smug prosecutors coming up against Mason hoping to get one against him thistime, only to be spanked out of the courtroom? Not sure they can sustain the 100% success rate credibly. Trying to make it 21C gritty will likely mean some of the old tropes will have to fold.
I like the idea of a defence-centric law show in these days of nothing but cops and prosecutors, and defence lawyers been portrayed as weaselly slime balls. But modern taste seems to want shouty, fingerpointy cross-X, which wasn’t Burr’s style, and without some of the Burr tropes preserved, the new series will risk being neither fish nor fowl. Fine line to tread.
Oh goody, another origin story. Is there any support for this approach in the original novels? Or are we way past that sort of concern these days? I mean, it seems like using the name Perry Mason on this type of story is just a hook to get people to look at it.
You’re right about the name being used as a hook, still I am looking forward to it. I remember watching Perry Mason growing up and enjoying it, however I haven’t seen or thought of it in decades. This is for me a good candidate for a remake/reboot.
Judging from the trailer, I like that it’s showing Mason before he became a well known and successful defense attorney. I also like that it is set in the past, late 20s early 30s. It will be nice to see a show with no cell phones or computers. Finally, based on the casting it looks to be an excellent show.
If they wanted to steal a character to make a detective series they could have done it about Paul Drake. This may be a fine series, I may even like it, but initially I’m going to be skeptical because a good show doesn’t need to glom onto a successful character that way. Perry was a detective in many ways, some consider the character an archetype for other fictional detectives, but he didn’t project that kind of image, quite the opposite, he represented the educated intellectual legal approach to crime and mystery. So while I expect the new character to be out of sync with the established character (which is the great problem of all prequels) I’ll still try to view it as some kind of alternate universe bio of Mason and see where it goes. But I expect to end up shaking my cane at the TV and calling it malarkey.
I don’t know of any novel that talked about Mason as anything other than an attorney. Gardner based him on his own experiences as a trial attorney. He was an idealization of what Gardner wanted the law to be, a hired gun that served clients and not the public good. In the first half-dozen cases, that meant skirting the law, bribing police, and getting guilty people off. It wasn’t until Gardner realized he could make more money by cleaning Mason up and serializing his cases in mainstream magazines like the Saturday Evening Post that he became gooder than good and never took a guilty client. That guarantee justified every action that Mason took thereafter.
Maybe the tv series will have the flavor of the amoral early Mason, which would sit better on a private eye than an officer of the court. But I agree with everyone here that a Mason series that doesn’t have him as lawyer is too weird to be believed.