Per­ry Mason revival deliv­ers with the case of the entic­ing ori­gin story

The name Per­ry Mason is syn­ony­mous with a crim­i­nal defence lawyer who typ­i­cal­ly proves his client’s inno­cence while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly unmask­ing the real guilty par­ty. Three years after play­ing the mur­der­er in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow, Ray­mond Burr signed on to play Mason in the TV adap­ta­tion of Erle Stan­ley Gardner’s hit detec­tive novels.

The ini­tial series ran for 271 episodes over nine years, lat­er fol­lowed by a decade of TV movies begin­ning in the 1980s – Burr spent near­ly 40 years play­ing the tit­u­lar role. A grit­ty ori­gin sto­ry, in which Mason is a PI rather than a lawyer might not match up with the Burr image, how­ev­er, the new HBO take on an icon­ic char­ac­ter intends to make this dis­tinc­tion clear.

Set in Los Ange­les in 1932, the econ­o­my is in cri­sis, cops are cor­rupt, and a child kid­nap­ping-gone-wrong dom­i­nates the front page – there is a time­li­ness to aspects of the nar­ra­tive. Per­ry Mason (Matthew Rhys) is a world-weary inves­ti­ga­tor who makes a quick buck from movie stu­dio boss­es want­i­ng to con­trol their ros­ter of tal­ent via the threat of scan­dal – you might not look at dessert in the same way after the first episode.

Divorced and dis­con­nect­ed, he is a World War One vet­er­an who is still haunt­ed by what he saw in bat­tle. Pro­hi­bi­tion is still in effect, not that Per­ry pays much atten­tion to the bound­aries set by the law. When he is tasked with uncov­er­ing who is behind the head­line-grab­bing dis­turb­ing crime, the pulpy aspects of this sto­ry kick into gear.

Group dynam­ics are quick­ly estab­lished in the first two episodes with Emmy Award-win­ning Rhys lead­ing the way – orig­i­nal­ly Robert Downey Jr was set to star, instead, he takes on pro­duc­er respon­si­bil­i­ties. In The Amer­i­cans, Rhys deliv­ered a mas­ter­class in play­ing the chameleon, and while his Mason shares some of the same wor­ry lines as his deep-cov­er KGB spy, the trau­ma per­ma­nent­ly etched on his soul is exhib­it­ed through wry cyn­i­cism and self-destruc­tive behaviour.

Per­ry Mason doesn’t hold back on crime scene imagery or vio­lence, how­ev­er, humour does pep­per the dark­er moments, and Rhys is par­tic­u­lar­ly adept at this deliv­ery. Moments of lev­i­ty occur when­ev­er Mason’s part­ner of sorts, the fre­quent­ly ine­bri­at­ed Pete Strick­land (Shea Whigh­am) is on screen.

Rep­u­ta­tion is its own cur­ren­cy and one that many of the play­ers involved in this sor­did case under­stand. The team is made up of vet­er­an attor­ney EB Jonathan (John Lith­gow), play­ing the father fig­ure to the detached PI and Del­la Street (Juli­et Rylance), who is much more than a sec­re­tary. Some of the best moments in the first two episodes occur in the lawyer’s office, which cuts through the expo­si­tion by mak­ing this world and the rela­tion­ships feel lived in.

In a stacked cast, GLOW’s Gayle Rankin pulls focus when­ev­er the grief-strick­en moth­er is on screen. At times, the plot does get bogged down with the par­tic­u­lars but the intro­duc­tion of Tatiana Maslany’s mys­te­ri­ous church leader Sis­ter Alice instant­ly cranks up the ten­sion and intrigue.

In reac­tion to the recent Black Lives Mat­ter protests, depic­tions of the police on tele­vi­sion as char­ac­ters to root for have been up for dis­cus­sion. Per­ry Mason fol­lows a noir approach, paint­ing the sys­tem as cor­rupt with untrust­wor­thy cops act­ing in self-inter­est. The one excep­tion is tena­cious Black beat cop Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) whose ambi­tion and skills are sti­fled by prej­u­dice. He finds him­self caught in a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion as the dis­turb­ing case pro­gress­es. It might be set in the 1930s, nev­er­the­less, the themes pur­pose­ful­ly res­onate with the tur­bu­lent present.

Tak­ing a step back in time, HBO has clear­ly splashed the cash on the impres­sive and immer­sive sets from the grimy streets of Los Ange­les to Perry’s run­down for­mer fam­i­ly farm, which now sits in the mid­dle of an air­field. In the sec­ond episode, a flash­back to the trench­es in France is far from sub­tle but effec­tive­ly under­scores the hor­ror of Perry’s com­bat expe­ri­ence in an impres­sive action sequence. Vet­er­an TV direc­tor Tim Van Pat­ten (Board­walk Empire, The Sopra­nos) direct­ed six of the eight episodes, mar­ry­ing his tal­ents for a big pro­duc­tion with inti­mate scenes of explo­sive intensity.

A grit­ty ori­gin sto­ry runs the risk of being too dour or self-seri­ous, which Per­ry Mason avoids in the first two episodes by lean­ing into the wise­crack­ing dia­logue made famous by hard­boiled fic­tion. Reac­tions to this adap­ta­tion might vary depend­ing on how attached you are to the Burr series. Even so, the strong cast led by the mag­net­ic Rhys ensures that even when the con­spir­a­cy sags, you will be clam­our­ing to spend more time with this cast beyond find­ing out whodunnit.

Per­ry Mason pre­mieres 21 June on HBO and 22 June on Sky Atlantic.