FACT FILE: Perry Mason

As a noirish new prequel series continues on Sky Atlantic (9pm) – and the original airs on CBS Justice – we investigate the story behind the much-loved fictional lawyer…

● Perry Mason was created by Erle Stanley Gardner, a lawyer who took a special interest in defending the poor and wrongly implicated. In the 1940s, he founded the Court Of Last Resort, an organisation dedicated to helping people who were imprisoned unfairly. The cases inspired a dramatised court TV show (1957-58).

● Gardner wrote more than 80 novels and short stories featuring Perry Mason, published between 1933 and 1973, some after his death. When Gardner died in 1970, he was the bestselling US author of the 20th century; Perry Mason is one of the most popular book series in history, with 300 million sales.

● A specialist in ‘getting people out of trouble’, Perry investigated crimes to find the real culprit. He first appeared on screen in a six-film series, starting with 1934’s The Case Of The Howling

Dog. A radio serial followed (1943-55).

● Perry’s best-known incarnation came in 1957 with the TV series starring Raymond Burr, with Barbara Hale as his legal secretary, Della Street (centre). It was cancelled in 1966, but you can still see it every weekday at 12 noon and 6pm on CBS Justice (Freeview 39, Freesat 137, Sky 148, Virgin 192).

Burr and Hale later reunited for a series of TV movies.

NEW

FILM

Comedy, starring Joe Thomas and Simon Bird. See Movie Choice. 11.00 Buffy the Vampire Slayer

6.55pm Escape to the Chateau

7.55 Grand Designs

9.00 Devon and Cornwall: Fishing Lives 10.05 Sarah Millican: Thoroughly Modern

Millican Live Stand-up comedy.

6.40pm Romancing the Stone Comedy

adventure, starring Michael Douglas. 9.00 12 Years a Slave Oscar-winning fact-based period drama, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender. 11.40 Shame Drama, starring Michael

Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

Britain’s Gypsy Claimers

Roma people who moved to the UK.

Street Crime UK: Caught on Camera

Nick Wallis joins the Met’s robbery squads on a Friday night shift.

9.00 Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law 10.00 Executed on the Streets: Gang Wars

Killings that targeted the wrong men.

11.00 Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away!