Perry Mason (2020)

The series, which ultimately feels like the very long pilot for what could make a fine series yet to come, is easily enjoyable, nicely played and smartly designed, with some well-executed big set pieces; it is also occasionally unpleasant, a little nutty toward the end and too long and too busy for the material.

It is a gorgeous show in terms of production design and the cast is strong from top to bottom, but writers Rolin Jones & Ron Fitzgerald struggle to find a story worth investing in for at least the first half of the eight-episode season. The back half is much stronger, and the performances elevate the production throughout, but with attention spans diminished by the state of the world in 2020, “Perry Mason” could struggle to hold viewers this summer. ... The jury is still out on that one.

There are very solid performances in “Perry Mason”—Mr. Rhys grows on you; Steven Root is palpably dangerous as the D.A. Maynard Barnes; Lili Taylor brings a level of seasoned control to a cast in which many have adopted director Tim Van Patten’s evident policy of stylized overstatement. The series, which begins to feel like an eight-episode pilot in the way it slowly introduces characters who seem destined to reappear elsewhere. ... If there were less ruminative wheel-spinning and more dramatic substance to this “Perry Mason,” the overkill might not be so distracting.

Both engaging in its acting and period setting and frustrating in its story and pacing. Yup, it’s a classic mixed bag, a show that manages to be both a textured noir and a flat “Dick Tracy”-like cartoon whose villains are defined by only one characteristic.

This new Perry Mason is filled with great performances (albeit not all of them belonging on the same show). It looks incredible (though also occasionally much more gory than it needs to be). But the story’s a mess — at once convoluted and a bit too dull to fill eight hours — and the idea of giving Mason the origin story he never had ultimately proves more trouble than it’s worth.

HBO’s got its signature stamp all over this thing for better or worse. The result is something that’s only briefly connected to what you know as Perry Mason, and something so bleak as to make it hard to recommend.

So much attention is paid to establishing Mason as a complicated and sufficiently pained male protagonist (and Rhys, to his credit, has a greater range with watchable mournfulness than anyone else on television) that the other elements of the story can get lost. ... The stylistic self-indulgence and narrative nebulousness are more of a shame because when Mason finally finds himself in court, all the pieces of the show fall into place.

Despite the first-rate production values and the stellar cast, the plot is like a gleaming 1932 Packard Roadster with serious engine problems: It’s impressive and gorgeous and appointed with all sorts of shiny distractions, but eventually we can’t ignore how it’s weaving all over the road, jerking us around and sputtering this way and that.

Many of the subplots can feel wheel-spinning — Maslany is so alive in her scenes that it can be easy to lose oneself in their endless whirl, forgetting that not that much is happening in episodes exceeding an hour of length. Too much of this show, a punishing eight installments, feels like yet another iteration of what we’ve seen already, elsewhere and often superior.

As a detective story, the eight-episode season is middling, and by its end, the reason to revive this particular franchise remains, well, a mystery.

No matter how appealing Rhys is as a down-and-out private eye in search of truth, "Mason" is too funereal. There might be a time for a macabre mystery (especially if it picked up the pace), but it's certainly not now.

A dull slog through L.A. noir.