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For nine seasons and over 250 episodes Perry Mason ruled the television roost, it was the ratings flagship for CBS. Saturday nights at 7:30 this show was a viewing requirement in my household.
The show had a built in audience from the start with the millions of mystery fans who loved Erle Stanley Gardner's criminal defense attorney who always defended the innocent and never lost a case. Those parameters for the television series had to be respected. But also the right actor had to be found to play Mason.
One of the highest pieces of praise I ever read was Erle Stanley Gardner himself saying that Raymond Burr completely fitted his concept of the character he created. When you've got that kind of endorsement as well as the ratings to back it up, I'm sure the show could have run forever.
A really solid group of character players made up the cast here. Take a look at the credits on the pages here for Burr, Barbara Hale as Della Street, William Talman as District Attorney Hamilton Burger, William Hopper as Perry's private detective Paul Drake and Ray Collins as Police Lieutenant Tragg seem like they appeared in some of the best movies ever before going to series television.
Collins began experiencing health problems and first Wesley Lau and later Richard Anderson took the load from him. When Collins died in 1965 Anderson was the official cop for the series last year.
So indelible an impression this cast made on viewers minds that when CBS sought to revive Perry Mason in the middle seventies with a younger cast, the public viewed other stations in droves. Even with Collins, Hopper, and Talman all gone at that point, no one would accept their replacements.
The writers given the constraints of an hour television show managed to respect Erle Stanley Gardner's parameters and did a beautiful job with each and every episode.
This is what a good television series is all about.
score 9/10
bkoganbing 28 August 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1936958/ |
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15-9-2020 03:16:10
