perry mason series writer
"Perry Bricklayer is the show that launched a 1000 shows," says Ron Fitzgerald. "Every court drama y'all've ever seen comes from that Perry Mason template."
Fitzgerald should know: He'due south i of the creators (as well as a writer and executive producer) of a new Perry Mason series, a dark, stylish reboot ambulation now on HBO. While the new serial eschews the courtroom procedural manner made famous by the Perry Bricklayer that aired on CBS from 1957 through 1966—also as various sequels and Boob tube movies that followed—Fitzgerald and his co-creator Rolin Jones have null but appreciation for what the original testify, which was based on the bestselling novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, did for American tv set.
Raymond Burr played Perry Mason in the original serial from 1957 through 1966 and then afterward in TV movies. In the new HBO reimagining of the series, Matthew Rhys plays the character.
That Perry Mason created a template that's been followed by everything from Law & Gild to Marry McBeal and The Good Fight: lawyers, usually complicated simply decent, face up a different case each episode and, if all goes well, wrap things up tidily before the credits roll. It's a comforting, familiar handling for audiences and has been a formula for plenty of hits over the years, just it wasn't what Fitzgerald and Jones (who created the series alongside Susan and Robert Downey Jr.) wanted to give to a modern audience.
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"It was revolutionary TV for the time and was like a giant shot of adrenaline," Jones says. "But we had no involvement in repeating that because they already did information technology and then well. There was a pathway to revive this for the here and at present."
Matthew Rhys as Perry Mason in the new HBO series, which takes a fresh view of the legendary lawyer character previously played by Raymond Burr.
That means that the new serial, which stars Matthew Rhys as Mason, doesn't solve one specific crime each episode and there's little in the fashion of the witness-stand gotcha moments that role player Raymond Burr made famous. This fourth dimension around, Perry Mason follows the arc of i crime—the abduction and gruesome murder of a immature boy—throughout an entire season and looks at the diverse characters it touches in a dark, hardened 1930s Los Angeles. When we meet Rhys'due south Mason, in fact, he's working as more of a private investigator than a lawyer—and he's a much more complicated and troubled character than Burr'south ever was.
"Information technology wasn't a huge leap," Jones says. "When you start reading the novels, the guy doesn't appear in courtroom for the starting time three books. He was a fixer; he was an attorney in these books, but he doesn't have a lot of money so he's out there doing the work himself. Then, why not evidence upward two years beforehand and see what's there?"
Raymond Burr as Perry Stonemason and Barbara Unhurt as Della Street in a 1957 episode ofPerry Mason.
Juliet Rylance as Della Street and Matthew Rhys every bit Perry Mason in a 2020 episode ofPerry Mason.
Fitzgerald adds, "The first novel starts with a knock on his door, and he's already Perry Mason, a lawyer about town feared by cops and ne'er-exercise-wells alike. We wanted to pace dorsum and figure out how he becomes this guy."
Gardner's books, which started publishing in 1933 and all the same rank just backside the Harry Potter and Goosebumps series in sales numbers, made for an inspiring jumping off betoken. "We realized nosotros could go back to the source material and do a Chinatown sort of matter—we didn't have to remake the blackness-and-white Raymond Burr series," Fitzgerald says. "It became interesting because it tapped into my dearest for [the novels of] Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett."
The series of books, which were published for twoscore years, besides offered seemingly countless means for the series to develop. "There's and then much great stuff in these books, and in the other pulp fiction we read from the Erle Stanley Gardner universe," Jones says. "Knowing we wanted multiple seasons of this show, nosotros tried to take dogmatic ideas about justice and the nature of men and utilize those every bit tentpoles to think virtually how a guy comes effectually to those means of seeing things."
Despite shifting the fashion Mason's story is told and giving the series a breath of new life, there are some things near the character that have always been important, and that Jones and Fitzgerald wouldn't think about changing. "It'south the ur-television receiver prove for all of the crime dramas out there, and it's astonishing the legacy that the series has, especially in terms of form and construction," Jones says. "We're doing a serialized prove, so it'southward slowed downward in a sense, but what'due south timeless most it is that there'due south a guy who'southward trying to agree up a mirror to the world and say there are people who need someone to fight for them. There'southward always a need for Perry Stonemason, and at this particular fourth dimension, someone standing up for people who don't take a voice feels similar information technology might be the perfect affair."
Deputy Features Managing director
Adam Rathe is Town & Country'south Deputy Features Managing director, roofing arts and culture and a range of other subjects.
Source: https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a32947129/how-perry-mason-hbo-tv-different-from-original/
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