Review: ‘Perry Mason’ returns to HBO with gritty tone, many twists

Although it features an iconic character, played with tacit befuddlement by Welsh actor Matthew Rhys, and a cast that mines even the smallest moment for gold, much of the enjoyment of “Perry Mason” comes from its setting.

The Los Angeles of the early 1930s, in all of its bigoted, racist, corrupt glory, is a key character in this series’ mystery that concerns two Mexican Americans accused of murdering a fair-haired lad born with all of the advantages, but who cannot rise above his own mediocrity.

Season two of the series embodies a debate currently raging in societal and political circles with a key question being: What is justice?

That is a chicken-and-egg query if we’re being honest. Justice, though blind, is actually in the eye of the beholder, and that’s something that Mason learns as he defends Rafael (Fabrizio Guido) and Mateo (Peter Mendoza), brothers accused of killing Brooks McCutcheon, whose father has deep pockets but is tired of his son’s ill-advised schemes to bring prominence to himself — be it through a floating casino on the Pacific or luring a Major League Baseball team to L.A.

Since basically winning his first big case as a lawyer, Mason and his partner-in-training Della Street (Juliet Rylance) have concentrated on civil and contract law, chasing the dollars instead of the prestige of high-profile criminal cases.

But Perry possesses a moral compass, a sense of what justice should be. After the wife and aunt of those two young men request he take their case, he cannot resist at least looking at the evidence or lack thereof. It’s not difficult to predict that he will soon be on board. He and his team, which includes cop turned private investigator Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), take us through a different L.A. that shows how the groundwork may have been laid, making for a compelling, gritty journey from a sociological perspective.

Without that cast, however, where the actors fit the roles perfectly, the journey wouldn’t be remotely interesting.

Given this version of Mason predates the Erle Stanley Gardner character that became a mainstay on American television screens in the late 1950s, we’re given a decidedly less confident and not-so-intimidating version of the brilliant barrister. Rhys nails the portrayal.

He has more than capable partners in Rylance and Chalk whose characters allow for the exploration of the era’s marginalized communities.

Above all, however, “Perry Mason” does what’s expected, offering an engrossing mystery with more than a few twists.

George M. Thomas dabbles in movies and television for the Beacon Journal. Reach him at gthomas@thebeaconjournal.com.

Review

Movie: “Perry Mason”

Cast: Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk, Hope Davis

Rated: TV-MA for profanity, drugs and alcohol, graphic violence

Grade: B

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Review: ‘Perry Mason’ paints 1930s Los Angeles in shades of gray