Perry Mason and the case of the HBO cancellation

[Kevin M.]

I would like for some streaming service to resurrect this as maybe a trilogy of movies because it has a great cast, but as an episodic series it fell into bland minority stereotypes, and making an almost farcical percentage of the central characters into closeted gays and lesbians felt too contrived. Each season felt like they were stretching what should have been movies into multi-episode stories. 

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/perry-mason-canceled-hbo-1235635233/

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[PGage]

Disagree. I went back and started over with Season 1, then did Season 2, and liked both (2>1). Disappointed they are not continuing.

I don’t think the number of gay characters was unrealistic. Yes, 2 of the 4 main characters being gay is a high percentage, but they are not drawn from the population at random, they know each other, and so we know them, because they are gay. Once one of them is gay, it is not shocking that someone else they know is also gay. Plus, as I have noted before, it is an homage to the fact that half of the actors in the 1960s TV show we’re gay, and also explains a lot about the relationship between Perry and Della.

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[Marti Lawrence]

I loved everything about it.  The actors were superb, the period costumes, décor, and vehicles were complimented by outstanding cinematography.  And the musical score was outstanding!  I’m so sad that we don’t get any more. 

~Marti

[Paul Murray]

The Case of the CEO Hunting $3B in Cost Savings

[Tom Wolper]

I had just started watching the series when this thread appeared and I wanted to watch it all before commenting. The building of ‘30s era LA, the costumes, and the music were all stunning. Taking one case over a season made it drag through and I would have preferred two or three cases.

To Kevin’s point of two of the four leads being gay, I thought that was brilliant. Having a single gay character could feel like a stunt and it would be hard to keep from marginalizing the character. Making both Della and Hamilton gay gives a chance for some exposition during their conversations without any sexual tension. The show’s creators tried to give everyone an active sex life and that fell flat for me.

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[PGage]

Tom has hit on my main criticism, as someone who continues to work through, slowly, the original TV series. Perry Mason needs to have several cases, indeed I would have preferred the HBO version go with the case a week approach, perhaps integrated with an overall arc (most lawyers work in more than one case at a time after all).

Most of Perry’s TV cases never go to trial, one reason many of the common criticisms of him as a trial attorney are not really valid. He does do things that would not be allowed at trial, but often the judge says something like: “since this is a preliminary hearing and there is no jury, I’ll allow it.” This is how Perry is able to dazzle, and get a result over the short time frame of the episode. 

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[Tom Wolper]

I always thought the reason they made the courtroom scenes preliminary hearings was so they wouldn’t need 12 extras for a jury.

One other thing that bothered me (even though it was a McGuffin) was the idea in season 2 of McCutcheon building a major league ballpark and then not being able to get a team to move to LA. Major League Baseball on the west coast was inconceivable until air travel became common after WWII. And I understand they wanted to work in the Chavez Ravine evictions, but nobody was going to build a stadium before they had a team.

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