'Perry Mason' Comes Back to TV With a Raymond Chandler Twist

TV has a new Perry Mason, and he's nothing like the one Raymond Burr played from 1957 to 1966. Today's Mason is a troubled World War I veteran trying to find himself in 1932 Los Angeles, the topsy-turvy era of scandal-plagued actors, radio evangelists and daredevil aviatrixes, many based on real people of the period. “It's a history buff's feast,” says John Lithgow, 74, who portrays E. B. Jonathan, Mason's lawyer boss, in the eight-episode series Perry Mason (HBO, premiering June 21, 9 p.m. ET). “There's an authentic old-movie snap to it,” he explains, “and we did our variation on the classic Perry Mason moments.”

But if you want to see moments like the classic ones where a witness breaks down weeping and confesses under the onslaught of Raymond Burr's courtroom rhetoric, forget it. “When people say, ‘Oh, I'm so excited that they're going to do Perry Mason again, I've always loved that show,’ I'm hesitant to tell them how different ours is going to be — in fact, it's just the opposite. To me, that's what makes the whole project so exciting.” Think of it as a Perry Mason legal drama — a grisly child-kidnapping case — crossed with Raymond Chandler and Chinatown.

"This Perry's not this perfect lawyer,” says Matthew Rhys (The Americans), 45, who plays Mason. He's a shady private detective learning the ropes from Jonathan. “They have a taunting friendship,” Lithgow adds. “Jonathan thinks of himself as quite a grandee, with all of these city connections, all sorts of strings that he can pull. And bit by bit as the story unfolds, you realize he's not nearly as good at this as Perry is. You see Perry Mason outgrow his mentor, deciding, ‘Wait a minute. I can do this a lot better.'"

Far from Burr's towering, Abe Lincoln-like figure of righteousness, the new Perry at first resembles Danny DeVito as the sleazy tabloid reporter in L.A. Confidential, making a tenuous living by snapping photos of movie stars in compromising situations that violate the morals clause in their contracts, so the studios will pay him to go away.