It’s not called the “Perry Mason Murder Hour”; some of the crimes involved are much more interesting than murder. I get tired of the bad people not receiving justice through the system instead of gettin’ murderized.
Thanks to What_Exit for the fix. I should have caught it.
There was a sequel called Perry Mason: The Class Action Lawsuit, but ratings were disappointing.
But the movie, Perry Mason: Pet Lawyer, was quite funny and well recieved.
Murder is the most serious crime, and the most interesting crime story for most people. People will come back to see who killed who, but might not come back for a white collar crime.
Same reason the overwhelming majority of mystery stories in the library are murder mysteries. It’s a genre definition. If you are a good writer or a good television show producer, and have connections and a reputation, you can probably publish a non-murder detective or police (or amateur sleuth) mystery story, or get your non-murder detective/police/sleuth TV show on the air. But it’s outside of genre and it’s not what’s expected so you’d find it harder going.
An exception were the twin mystery series aimed at young readers in the 1930’s, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. I think the attitude was that murder was too monstrous and evil for children to be reading about. So that conjured a separate subgenre. So you can do it if it’s for a juvenile audience, with teen or preteen main character heroes.
So they tried Perry Mason and The Stolen Pig - the ratings were equally disappointing.
Cause peeps in TV world just can’t quit doing murder.
A chance of an inheritance, a cutie pie waiting to be the love of your life, they pissed you off years ago.
What will you do? Murder someone.
Yep. Murder somebody. Or be in the wrong place at the wrong time and they’ll think you did.
Who you gonna call?
Della Street. She’ll get you in. Cry alot. (Smoke your cigarette with shaky hands, too. That looks good on film.)
I was never really bothered by every show being about a murder, not just about Perry Mason, but all those formulaic detective shows. The thing that I can’t figure out is how every single murder on these shows involve the super rich. Rich people must be the most dangerous demographic, always murdering each other or killing bystanders or whatever. It’s uncanny.
Well, you get bored of escargot and you’re not quite at the Most Dangerous Game stage of ennui, so what’s next?
I hear people saying that the rich can shoot people on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
Poor people can’t afford Perry Mason. There have been shows about crusading public defenders but Law & Order Plea Bargain just doesn’t grab people.
He has taken cases for very low fees at times. Since he also was once
paid with a racehorse, he can afford to do so.
Along the same lines, I often wondered why people continued to live in Cabot Cove, Maine. That was the home of Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote, and there was a homicide each week.
Several of the original Sherlock Holmes stories do not involve murder. Indeed, in a few of them there isn’t even an actual crime committed. But I doubt you could get away with that today. Mystery readers want their dead bodies. Even the cozy fans, who pretend to be all dainty and refined. You still have to give them a corpse. 
Don’t all four of the longer Holmes stories all have a murder? Just checked - they do.
Short stories can get away with less serious crimes. Readers have been demanding murders in their, ahem, murder mysteries for almost two centuries. TV shows and movies make sure to scratch those itches.
When I was a wee lad, I watched The Rifleman every week. Once during an episode, I turned to my dad and said, ‘Isn’t Lucas a great guy?’
He replied, ‘What’s good about him… he kills someone every week’?.
Same thing I thought about Columbo as a child: it’s dangerous living where he works. Even though he always got the perpetrator there was again another murder next week.
There was some comedian who said, “Lucas McCain, this man is a serious psychopath.”
No kiddin’.
The one thing that stood out to me about Perry Mason was that he always seemed to get the guilty party to confess on the witness stand. Of course I didn’t watch the show all that often, so maybe I’m mis-remembering.
Much less Midsomer county in England, home of Midsomer Murders. Most of those episodes feature several homicides over a short period of time.