Perry Mason - Season One, Vol. 1

Buy This Item Perry Mason - Season One, Vol. 1 by Paramount/CBS  Available from Amazon  $21.99  on 11-14-2008     There was a time when the defense attorney was a heroic everyman, not the butt of bad jokes; think Atticus Finch in <I>To Kill a Mockingbird</I>, and, of course, Raymond Burr's incomparable Perry Mason. The first season of <I>Perry Mason</I>, which launched in 1957 on CBS, shows just how dramatic a "law and order" show could be. Shot in lush black and white, on film, the episodes have been lovingly restored (including lost minutes hacked from reruns to accommodate commercials). The story arcs and atmosphere feel more like film noir (Perry Mason + Philip Marlowe = separated at birth?) than early TV. The cast was stellar, including Burr's Emmy-winning Perry Mason, the indefatigable lawyer who takes tough cases no one else will touch. Burr's chemistry crackles from episode 1 with his costars, including Barbara Hale as secretary Della, William Hopper as private detective Paul Drake, and William Talman as Hamilton Burger, the well-meaning but overmatched district attorney. While it's true that the last-minute witness-stand confessions strain some credulity, the case-cracking, character development, and dialogue set a high bar for the legal shows that followed. "The Case of the Negligent Nymph," for instance, involves a comely young woman--and murder suspect--fished out of the Pacific; Mason deadpans to Drake, "Call off the search, Paul; we've landed our mermaid." The shows unfold at a leisurely pace, and yet don't rely on the overly expositive dialogue that, say, <I>Law & Order</I> does; the viewer learns a lot about each case simply as it happens. The set contains the first 19 episodes of the first season and will hook you, even if you're not a procedural buff. <I>--A.T. Hurley</I> Reader Reviews These DVDs of Perry Mason are fantastic. You will appreciate these stories now more that you did when you first saw them. The photography is superb, the womens clothing, buildings and cars are amazing. The stories actually follow a suspenseful thread, without today's disjointed style and all that extraneous info about the characters' private lives and personal dramas. Be careful, you will find it hard to ration them out to only one episode per day. Michael Prior

Perry Mason - Season One, Vol. 1 Available from Amazon Price: $21.99 Updated on 11-14-2008.

SPONSORED LINKS