A darkish, gritty reboot of the golden oldie Perry Mason? At first, it seems like a joke, or like a Jack Donaghy thought from 30 Rock. The traditional authorized drama debuted method again in 1957, which leaves fairly a thick layer of mud to brush away, however HBO’s reboot — premiering this Sunday at 9/8c; I’ve seen the primary six episodes — in some way feels vitally present, with richly drawn characters, attractive visuals, a genuinely compelling central thriller and one other terrific lead efficiency from star Matthew Rhys.
With Rhys entering into the title position initially performed by Raymond Burr, the prequel finds the long run lawyer as a grumpy, booze-soaked non-public eye in 1930s Los Angeles. Slumped in a mustard-stained tie, this Perry Mason is morally ambivalent, psychologically haunted and cynical to a fault. (“Everyone’s acquired an angle, all people’s hiding one thing and all people’s responsible,” he grumbles at one level.) Rhys employs the identical hangdog scowl right here that he had as conflicted Soviet spy Philip Jennings on The Individuals, and that melancholy, world-weary demeanor units the tone for all the sequence. Casting Rhys as Mason was a masterstroke; he makes the entire thing work.
Perry Mason‘s season-long thriller facilities on a chilling picture: a useless child boy along with his eyes stitched open, the sufferer of a kidnapping goes horribly mistaken. Mason is tasked with discovering out who killed the boy and why, and the path of clues leads him deep into the Metropolis of Angels’ sleazy underbelly, which is crawling with soiled cops, dishonest wives and grandstanding legal professionals. The story serves up a number of intriguing plot threads to kind by way of… and various ugly visuals alongside the way in which, too, together with a corpse whose head is usually blown to bits by a shotgun blast.
The noir-flavored homicide thriller that follows fuses collectively the darkish, twisty procedural components of True Detective and The Night time Of with the retro status drama of Boardwalk Empire and The Knick. The jazz rating is moody and mournful, and the visible palette leaves everybody drenched in dramatic shadows, even on a sunny L.A. day. A palpable disappointment hangs over each scene: The nation is deep within the throes of the Nice Melancholy, and we are able to see the determined starvation lurking in individuals’s eyes.
Rhys is backed up by an nearly embarrassingly stacked forged: John Lithgow as Mason’s legal professional mentor E.B. Jonathan, Tatiana Maslany as fiery church preacher Sister Alice, GLOW‘s Gayle Rankin because the useless boy’s catatonic mom… by the point Stephen Root walked in as an boastful D.A., I laughed out loud on the sheer audacity of assembling a forged this good. (I’d fortunately watch a by-product of Lithgow and Root’s characters verbally sparring over a recent case every week.) There are acquainted faces from the unique sequence as properly, with Juliet Rylance as Mason’s future secretary Della Avenue, who’s now E.B.’s receptionist, and Gotham‘s Chris Chalk as future investigator Paul Drake, now a Black beat cop with a knack for detective work.
I do really feel I ought to supply a warning: It is a heavy, intense watch. It does include a vein of darkish humor, principally because of Shea Whigham (who’s by no means been higher) as sleazy investigator Pete Strickland, nevertheless it’s not precisely lighthearted escapism. It’s impeccably crafted and surprisingly involving, although, balancing out the crime components by delving deep into Mason’s troubled psyche. And for die-hard followers, it does ultimately evolve into the courtroom drama we anticipate from the model. It nearly performs like a superhero’s origin story, with Mason exhibiting hints of the crusading protection lawyer he’d turn into. I’m not in any hurry to leap forward to Mason’s glory days, although. His early years are fairly nice, too, because it seems.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: HBO’s Perry Mason reboot is a recent tackle the famed TV lawyer, with a juicy thriller and a ridiculously good forged.