HBO Is Bringing Back Perry Mason, and This Time He F*cks

Gather round children, and let me tell you a story of the procedural that launched a thousand cop dramas! Perry Mason, TV's first weekly one-hour series, premiered in 1957 and followed the weekly cases of the titular Perry Marson (Raymond Burr), a criminal defense lawyer practicing in Los Angeles. It ran for nine beloved seasons on CBS, and now, HBO is officially rebooting it as a limited series from Team Downey, a.k.a. Robert Downey Jr. and his wife Susan Downey's production company.

The Americans' Matthew Rhys has been tapped to play Perry Mason, who is described as being at a point in his life when he's living paycheck to paycheck as a private investigator. The series is set in 1932 Los Angeles when Mason is still haunted by his wartime experiences in France and dealing with the effects of a broken marriage.

This isn't the first time Hollywood has tried to recapture the magic of the original show though. CBS tried to revive the series with a new cast in The New Perry Mason in 1973, but it was generally considered a flop and only ran for 15 episodes. There have been several successful Perry Mason TV movies (in which Burr reprised his original role) but no one else has tried to reboot the series until now.

Given that Team Downey's version has gotten a limited series order, you shouldn't expect the series to hang around a very long time, but if Big Little Lies' surprise Season 2 renewal taught us anything, it's that you never really know what to expect from HBO.

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