Hinterland

Perry Mason assumed a level of sophistication never before demanded of American TV viewers

One used to hear court cases described as being “not like Perry Mason”. The fictional Los Angeles defence lawyer was already a cultural icon in America, but thanks to the 271-episode CBS television series that ran from 1957 to 1966, starring Raymond Burr, he went global. Mason always defended alleged murderers (the City of the Angels was then, as now, the Midsomer of California), and always won. A great achievement of his creator, the novelist Erle Stanley Gardner, was to encourage suspension of disbelief. This was done not by suggesting Mason might lose, because, of course, he never did, but by trying to force the reader or viewer to guess which of the unlikely other suspects had actually done it.

Lest the conceit of a lawyer who never loses be considered implausible, one should note the real-life inspiration for Mason – a Los Angeles attorney named Earl Rogers, who practised a century ago until dying in 1922 at the age of 52. Rogers fought 77 murder cases and lost only three, because he knew more about medicine than many doctors, and could often destroy the prosecution’s case by proving their medical experts wrong. In 1932, 10 years after Rogers’s death, Gardner wrote his first Perry Mason story, The Case of the Velvet Claw. Over the next 40 years, he published more than 80 Mason novels and four short stories. Gardner himself was a lawyer in California, and spent his professional life trying to correct injustices. Once he had made plenty of money, he took on pro bono work – an attractive habit he passed on to Mason, too.

Gardner’s novels had obvious appeal to broadcasters, and adaptations were quickly syndicated on American radio. Warner Brothers made half a dozen cheap and cheerful Hollywood films. Gardner was a highly serious and reputable lawyer but, before Mason, he had made earlier forays into writing as an author of pulp fiction, under a series of pseudonyms. Although elements of pulp remain in the Mason stories, they were a shift upmarket. When

CBS decided to film the stories (and create others with the same characters), it was revolutionary: the first ever television drama series broadcast in hour-long episodes, and assuming a level of sophistication and curiosity never before demanded of an American audience.

When the BBC started showing the CBS series over here throughout the 1960s, it became just as popular as in America, not least because of its concise but detailed storytelling and some superb acting. Burr, as Mason, was authoritative and utterly convincing: he had auditioned for the part of Hamilton Burger, the district attorney whom Mason always beats, but Gardner, who was consulted during the casting, said Burr was Perry Mason.

The show was formulaic, but none the worse for that. A group of characters is introduced, often in some professional context such as a business, enterprise or well-to-do family with conflicts. One of them is usually loathsome – the victims often but not always asked for it – and is murdered.

The viewer discerns any number with a motive, knowing that the accused – arrested around halfway through the episode and a client of Mason – can’t be guilty. There is a preliminary hearing, to decide whether the case should go before a jury. Mason and Burger examine and cross-examine witnesses; for the defence, the case gets worse before it gets better. But Mason’s pet private detective, Paul Drake (played with a mixture of sleaze, charm and appalling taste in jackets by William Hopper) always comes up with a fresh piece of evidence that Mason presents at the end of the programme: it ensures that someone in court confesses, often breaking down on the stand, and there is no jury trial of Mason’s client.

Last year HBO resurrected the franchise, with Matthew Rhys as an alcoholic younger Mason, Paul Drake as a black ex-LAPD officer (played by Chris Chalk), and Della Street, Mason’s secretary (portrayed in Doris Day fashion in the original series by Barbara Hale), represented as a hard-bitten lesbian. Times have changed; some may prefer it. But the original series is readily available on Freeview, and remains pulp fiction of the highest class.

William Hopper plays Mason’s pet private eye with sleaze, charm and appalling jackets