25 Most Hotly Anticipated New TV Shows Of 2020

A new adaptation of the original Perry Mason novels from Erie Stanley Gardner, this isn’t going to be anything like the TV staple Perry Mason you remember from reruns.

The original adaptation starred Raymond Burr as the crime-solving lawyer, and ran as a black and white show in the fifties and sixties, before being reimagined again in the seventies. Burr was back as the character in a series of TV films in the eighties and nineties, proving that his version of the character had legs.

Thing is, Burr wasn’t the first Mason - the books actually date back to the 1930s, and there’s been a version of Perry Mason on the big screen, on the radio or on television every decade since then until Burr’s death from kidney cancer in 1993 put paid to any further films.

This newer version for HBO was originally to have starred Robert Downey Jr, but Matthew Rhys (fresh off an acclaimed run in The Americans) has taken over the role. And it’s a period piece, set in the time period of the original novels. With the genius of John Lithgow attached to the project as Mason’s PI, this has serious potential to be great.