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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
39
Mixed:
19
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Jun 17, 2020
Season 1 Review:
“Perry Mason” perfectly and methodically lays out a compelling and expanding mystery (which is, after all, the main attraction in a genre story), while giving remarkable shape to characters whose stories will resonate with a modern audience. ... Not a drop of talent is wasted here.
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The PlaylistOct 5, 2020
Season 1 Review:
By about episode 3 it hits its stride, and you realize that as splashy as the murder mystery hook might be, it is not the plot that is the puzzle here, it is the people. There is a jigsaw-player’s pleasure in watching how their scattered, frayed edges will eventually fit together, how they will slowly reconfigure across the eight episodes into a stable new status quo. That of course relies on exceptional performances and “Perry Mason” delivers right across the cast.
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Jun 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The experimentation that Jones and Fitzgerald have done here shows their love for the original but also their desire for expansion and their trust that the solidity of the foundation could hold up a story with more layers. Beyond that, it could be just downright entertaining, too.
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Mar 10, 2023
Season 2 Review:
After three long pandemic years, the brilliant Matthew Rhys returns to his series role as a legal eagle now embroiled in a haunting and hypnotic 1930s plot that resembles the film noir classic Chinatown. Yup, it’s that good. Perry, it's great to have you back where you belong.
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TV Guide MagazineJun 19, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A more realistic and sordidly satisfying [Perry Mason]. ... Rhys is a marvelous Perry. [22 Jun - 5 Jul 2020, p.6]
Mar 6, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 — which also features notable supporting performances from Hope Davis, Katherine Waterston, a returning Shea Whigham, and others — also confirms the sense that the first season was effectively eight episodes of winding up. With these episodes Perry Mason really gets going.
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ColliderFeb 27, 2023
Season 2 Review:
When we see where Mason ends up and how he must contemplate this truth alone, it almost feels like Season 2's finale could be a series ender. One hopes it isn’t, as Perry Mason has really found its footing, but it still provides a poetic sense of closure all the same.
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The TelegraphMay 2, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Knottily complex storytelling, replete with plot twists and moral nuance, was an improvement on the uneven debut run. Themes of racial and sexual prejudice arose naturally from the narrative, rather than feeling tacked-on for 21st century relevance. ... Perry Mason is an underrated treat.
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Mar 6, 2023
Season 2 Review:
HBO’s dark revisionist version of Perry Mason didn’t reach its top tier of dramas in the first season but comes considerably closer in the second, achieving a film-noir-ish cool that leans deeply into “L.A. Confidential” territory. Filtering race, sexuality and the corrupting influence of wealth through a 1930s lens, the series feels more relevant and compelling as a glimpse of the present through that past.
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Jun 19, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Perry Mason is the ugliest fun-to-watch show (or perhaps the funnest-to-watch ugly show, I don't know) since Showtime's cuddly serial-killer-next-door series Dexter left the air nearly a decade ago, and the cracked side of America's national psyche will be the better for it.
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Jun 19, 2020
Season 1 Review:
As the show more or less transforms in flight, each episode becomes a more fitting showcase for Rhys, an actor who projects square decency even when he’s neither square nor decent. ... As Perry becomes his superhero-lawyer self, as he assembles his newly diverse supporting team, the detective show gives way to the more straightforward pleasures of a courtroom drama, where the system can work, even if it’s just barely, because there’s a lawyer to believe in.
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Jun 11, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Rhys deftly unfurls the enigmatic character layer by layer, crafting this degenerate into a more recognizable version of the legal icon revered for decades. The mystery of how he’s able to pull that off is far more compelling than the unsavory plot that strings Perry Mason along.
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Feb 27, 2023
Jun 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The audience for this show – I've no doubt there's a ready one – should feel ably served by the material. To those who know the title, "Perry Mason" is unexpected. Those who don't may well be enamored of its overall execution, fitting of a top title. It's a high grade of fine that left me in want of something entirely new.
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Jun 22, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Spread over eight episodes, this “Perry Mason” deserves the time you give it. It lets supporting characters have their moments and it gives Rhys yet another opportunity to display just how fertile his imagination is. If there’s a second season – and that’s quite likely – it’d be nice to see cases closed after two or three episodes.
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Jun 19, 2020
Season 1 Review:
"This is not your grandma's Perry Mason" isn't much of a marketing pitch. A better description for this sort-of origin story, however, is "Chinatown" meets "Boardwalk Empire," in a slick, gritty period crime drama that's good enough to make an argument for watching, if not quite an open-and-shut case.
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Jun 18, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A simultaneously gorgeous, gritty, and sometimes downright gory period piece filled with fine performances, but also overloaded a little with B and C storylines that could have been streamlined or cut. The excess fat in Perry Mason is a flaw, but not enough of one to detract from what is, overall, a fine and absorbing season of television.
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Jun 16, 2020
Season 1 Review:
From a narrative standpoint, Perry Mason isn’t quite top-shelf HBO. In the spirit of the endearingly contrived original series, where Mason regularly got culprits to confess under oath, there are plot holes, unbelievable twists, speeches that sound great but raise more questions than they answer. Fans of the original’s case-of-the-week format may not be the only viewers frustrated by the slow pace of this serialized reboot. But Rhys leads a stellar cast.
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Jun 16, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Strictly speaking, it works better than it should. There’s so much sunk into the production that the world of the show really comes alive, and the mystery is engrossing and unpredictable. ... . But the story doesn’t let us into [Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany) and her controlling mother's] interior lives quite enough. It’s a glaringly deficiency, because the series spends altogether too much time wading in the shallows of the men’s feelings—be it Perry, E.B., or one of the dozen-odd suits that end up holding significant information.
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Jun 16, 2020
Season 1 Review:
With a strong lead performance by Matthew Rhys, an ensemble to die for and impeccable Depression era production values, the show makes a solid case for itself without ever exactly giving a compelling answer as to why, of all the available IP in the world, this was the brand anybody wanted to mine. ... Perry Mason generally avoids feeling like an assembly line Cable Anti-Hero: Great Depression Edition. Much of the credit goes to Rhys.
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Jun 16, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Over the course of eight episodes, the show delves into Mason's past while redefining him for a new age of television driven by complex characters, richly detailed worlds, and season-long storylines. It manages those first two elements so well that it's a shame it keeps tripping over the third.
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