Darker defender

The Americans’ Matthew Rhys stars in this noirish Perry Mason reboot, which tells the origin story of the legendary lawyer, writes Emily Colston

T his is not the courtroom drama your dad still loves watching in reruns.

An origin story for the character who would become the defence lawyer at the centre of more than 80 novels, a longrunning TV show and dozens of telemovies starring Raymond Burr, it reveals a Perry Mason we’ve never seen before.

The setting is Los Angeles in 1932, and a downtrodden Mason – played by The Americans’ Emmy winner Matthew Rhys – is working as a private investigator, haunted by his experiences in France during World War I and the failure of his marriage.

The rest of the country is struggling with the Great Depression, but LA is booming thanks to its oil and film industries. Just below the surface, though, the cracks are beginning to appear.

“From the get-go, you know that this is not going to be (your) parents’ Perry Mason,” Rhys said in a recent interview.

While initially reluctant to get involved with the project, Rhys says when he realised what they planned to do with the character, he was hooked.

“I was in,” Rhys said. “I wanted to know how this guy gets to be the Perry Mason that we all think we know and love.”

This version of Mason “is so fallible and flawed that I couldn’t say no to the role”, he said.

John Lithgow (The Crown), plays sometime Mason mentor EB Jonathan, who brings him in on the case of a missing child, which will be the focus of the first season. He agrees that this is an entirely different Perry Mason to the one seen so many times before.

“It’s not what you expect when you hear the name Perry Mason,” Lithgow said in a recent interview.

“It re-imagines the old 1950s and ’60s TV series as a ’30s crime noir, very much in the mode of Chinatown.

“Perry Mason is not even an attorney when it begins. He’s a scrappy private investigator who works for an over-the-hill attorney (Lithgow’s character), who’s not very good at his job, but who lands a huge case.

“It’s basically the origin story of what forces Perry Mason into becoming a lawyer almost in spite of himself.”

Showrunners Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald first floated the idea of doing a prequel after producer Susan Downey, who was trying to develop a new Perry Mason as a vehicle for husband Robert Downey Jr, brought the project to them.

“We wanted to create a real character,” Fitzgerald said in a recent interview.

“Our Mason is more of a gritty fixer than a polished lawyer; more Bogart than Burr.”

There’s no doubt it’s a darker version of Mason we’re dealing with here.

“Perry is fractured and doing his best to avoid anything that would make him look inward,” Jones said.

But this darkness could be a good thing.

“You get away with more sadness because you have very, very attractive Matthew Rhys,” Jones said. “Who doesn’t want to see him brood a little bit, for crying out loud?”

Matthew Rhys: From the get-go, you know that this is not going to be (your) parents’ Perry Mason.

Perry Mason, Monday, 11am and 8.30pm,

Fox Showcase and streaming on Foxtel Now