Perry Mason Season 1

Based on characters from Erle Stanley Gardner's novels, this new HBO drama series tells the origin story of famed, rough-around-the-edges criminal defense lawyer Perry Mason. Set in booming 1932 Los Angeles while the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression, the series begins with Mason (Matthew Rhys) living paycheck to paycheck as a low-rent private investigator who's haunted by his wartime experiences in France and managing the fallout of a broken marriage. When a child kidnapping goes unspeakably wrong, Mason is hired by Elias Birchard "E.B." Jonathan (John Lithgow) - an renowned attorney who's both a father figure and mentor to Mason - to uncover the inconvenient truth.

With the help of Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham), Mason's extra set of eyes on his various, often unsavory investigations, and E.B.'s legal secretary Della Street (Juliet Rylance), whose brains and ambition go far beyond what's expected of women in the 1930s, Mason sets out to help his client by any means necessary. Meanwhile, the firebrand preacher Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany) rallies her flock around the defendant in the case, while Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), a beat cop with a knack for investigative work, reluctantly finds himself and the center of the investigation as he navigates a racist and corrupt police department. With eight cliff-hanger episodes, Perry Mason is an exciting, twisty series that finds Mason harnessing his early days as a dogged PI to become a somewhat-legit defense attorney determined to do what's right - even when it's not necessarily "legal."