If you're a fan of the old Perry Mason series, it'll help you to think of this as a completely separate thing. This series packages its idealism and hope in tons of grit and darkness, going back to a time when violence was the daily bread of virtually everyone walking the streets of LA.
In broad terms, the story is this: it's the turn of 1931 in LA, and a child that's been kidnapped on Christmas Eve is ransomed for $100k (almost $2 million in today's money!) from its lower-middle class parents, only to be returned the day after Christmas dead, with its eyes sewed open. The police are quick to accuse the father, then the mother of the child; defending the accused is an elderly and somewhat anachronistic lawyer named E.B. Jonathan. Perry Mason is a private investigator Jonathan hires to be his eyes. As the DA presses for a quick conviction, drumming up the morals angle in the absence of reliable evidence, more bodies are recovered and Mason soon discovers the whole thing is being staged to incriminate the child's mother.
In the backdrop of all of this is an image of LA in the early years of the Great Depression - a city infested with crime, inhabited by short-tempered people living off their wits, and governed by an elite that's up to its neck in dirty tricks. Mason himself is hardly an exception - a veteran with a dishonorable discharge who fails as a father, entrepreneur, and man, but remains committed to an idealism that doesn't square with the reality he inhabits. Through his eyes, we see a different LA, one filled with people damaged by life, capable of the good even as they're pushed toward the evil. Even though the opening is almost too much - the sewn-open eyes are on the verge of overdoing it - by the end, the story seems well-balanced and consistent with the historical record, and Mason appears as a humane anti-hero: neither a bum, nor a messiah.
The series is rich in great acting (esp. from Maslany and Rylance), fantastic photography, and full-bodied secondary characters. My only gripe about it is that the kidnapping case is just a bit too heavy - one reason why I watched this alone (my wife can't stand watching children being hurt; I prefer the Dr. Watson approach, see but don't observe) - but it also seems to push the story too far, requiring a virtual deus ex machina to resolve the drama. When it happens, it's fairly consistent with the represented world, but in the abstract, it can seem a bit jarring. The casting of Rhys is interesting because he's much more moody and shady than Downey Jr. (who was cast first as PM) would ever manage to be, but I felt there was a slight imbalance to his portrayal. Can't quite pin down what was missing - maybe it's a bit harder to buy his idealism when he's so good at capturing Mason's down-and-outness?
Anyway, this is a good one.
Review of Perry Mason
