HBO is joining forces once again with one of the company’s longtime collaborators Tim Van Patten in the director’s chair, according to Deadline. Production has begun on Perry Mason, which will be a limited series for the premium cable network. The upcoming series will reimagine the character of Perry Mason from Erle Stanley Gardner’s series of novels. Starting in 1933, Gardner published a number of fiction books about Mason, a criminal defense lawyer.
Van Patten has directed a noteworthy sum of episodes for some of HBO’s most popular series throughout his career. His credits include The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Sex and the City, Deadwood and Rome as well as David Simon’s predecessor to The Wire, NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street.
The adventures of Perry Mason have been adapted a number of times in various mediums. The Perry Mason character has been the subject of radio plays, films, television movies and perhaps most notably a television series for CBS called Perry Mason that ran from 1957 to 1966.
In this incarnation, the titular character will be played by Matthew Rhys. Rhys is best known for portraying Phillip Jennings in the FX espionage drama series The Americans alongside Keri Russell. He has also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s The Post and the Bradley Cooper-led Burnt.
This new adaptation will be set in Los Angeles in 1932 when the city was going through massive changes as a result of the Great Depression and the revelation of talking pictures. A date is not set for the limited series’ debut.
