According to a recent Twitter post, HBO’s popular historical crime thriller Perry Mason will return in February. In August 2020, when the first season concluded with the Dodson case, we last saw the show’s titular detective, played by Emmy nominee Matthew Rhys. After a critically lauded and Emmy-nominated first season, fans are eagerly awaiting the show’s return. This series serves as Mason’s “origin tale,” taking place in the early 1930s as the Great Depression sweeps throughout the United States.
Mason, a veteran of the Great War who is also just divorced, struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder as he works his way through the judicial system in Los Angeles, one of the few cities that is flourishing despite the Great Depression. Season 2 leaps ahead to 1933 after the sensational Dodson case involving a stolen child, with Mason “in the soup again,” as Rhys’s co-star Shea Whigham put it. With the help of his trusted assistant Della Street (Juliet Rylance), Mason, who is still traumatized by the events of World War I, switches gears from criminal to civil law. Since Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones have left the program and been replaced by The Knicks’ Michael Begler and Jack Amiel, Season 2 will be different than Season 1. However, the biggest surprise was Tatiana Maslany’s resignation, which was likely caused by her obligations to She-Hulk.
She took on the role of Sister Alice, a mystifying spiritual healer whose mysterious but popular messages combine elements of the gospel with those of a stage presentation. To add insult to injury, Maslany has stated in the past that she believed Sister Alice’s storyline was only beginning to develop inside the show. Perry Mason has hired a bevvy of fresh actors to replace Maslany. Katherine Waterston joins the series regularly, while the recurrent cast includes Hope Davis, Jon Chaffin, Fabrizio Guido, Peter Mendoza, Onohoua Rodriguez, and Jee Young Han. Likewise, Diarra Kilpatrick, who portrayed Clara Drake, has been promoted to a regular cast member.
Chris Chalk, Eric Lange, Justin Kirk, Stephen Root, Gayle Rankin, Nate Corddry, Veronica Falcon, Jefferson Mays, Lili Taylor, Andrew Howard, and Robert Patrick are also back, as are Rhys, Whigham, and Rylance. The series was developed by Fitzgerald and Jones and is based on a creation by Erle Stanley Gardner. It’s not the first time a program has been inspired by Gardner’s detective stories; Perry Mason, which premiered in 1957, was also groundbreaking. HBO’s adaptation owes a great deal not just to the skills of its writers and actors, but also to the vision of its director, Tim Van Patten, who effectively recreated the look of Los Angeles in the 1930s. In February, Perry Mason will return for a second season.