This week, we explore the seamy underbelly of 1932 Los Angeles with HBO’s exciting revisionist take on the character of Perry Mason. In HBO’s series, crucial supporting characters have been reimagined--Della Street is now a queer woman, Paul Drake is a Black man--in ways that inform the series’ systemic perspective and help it avoid some of the ideological pitfalls that much hard-boiled crime fiction of the past falls into. As a result, this is a Perry Mason that grapples both with our actual history and with the narrow lens of the classic CBS series, and in so doing, demonstrates how TV and film can use familiar formats and genres without just telling the same old stories.
This week, we explore the seamy underbelly of 1932 Los Angeles with HBO’s exciting revisionist take on the character of Perry Mason. In HBO’s series, crucial supporting characters have been reimagined--Della Street is now a queer woman, Paul Drake is a Black man--in ways that inform the series’ systemic perspective and help it avoid some of the ideological pitfalls that much hard-boiled crime fiction of the past falls into. As a result, this is a Perry Mason that grapples both with our actual history and with the narrow lens of the classic CBS series, and in so doing, demonstrates how TV and film can use familiar formats and genres without just telling the same old stories.