The original Perry Mason TV show has one of the greatest lines in the history of legal dramas. Before it was adapted for HBO, Perry Mason was a CBS series that ran from 1957 to 1966. Based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s detective novels, Perry Mason stars
Raymond Burr as the titular criminal defense lawyer.
The show follows Perry, a distinguished LA attorney who primarily represents innocent people who have been accused of murder. Other important characters include Perry’s secretary, Della Street (Barbara Hale); his confidant and frequent collaborator, private investigator Paul Drake (William Hopper); and the district attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman), who is often representing the prosecution in Perry’s cases.
Perry Mason episodes tend to follow the same track. Someone new walks into Perry’s office. They ask for his help in some mundane matter, and he is happy to accept the work. Later, a murder happens, and who is caught up in it but the innocent person Perry has been working with all along.
It’s a fantastic conceit for the show, and it led to Perry Mason being one of the most successful legal TV shows ever, and one of the longest-running. The show is instructional to every legal series that came after it, and the sequences and lines of the series remain indelible decades later.
In fact, one of the greatest legal TV show lines of all time comes from Perry Mason. In season 2, episode 9, “The Case of the Purple Woman”, Perry speaks with Della and reads to her from a lawyerly journal. He reads, as a way to point to his own thoughts on justice and the law, “A well-tried criminal case is a credit to all involved. There is no winning or no losing in the true administration of justice.” It’s a line that defines the show and is still one of the best legal TV show lines ever.
Perry Mason’s Best Line Tops Any Other In TV Legal Dramas
“The Case of the Purple Woman” deals with a possible case of art forgery that spirals into something bigger. When Perry is called to defend his client, he goes up against, of course, Hamilton Burger, and it’s Hamilton’s quote that Perry reads to Della.
It’s important that this line actually belongs to Hamilton, because it creates a thread between Hamilton and Perry. The men are almost always opposed, and they don’t always get along perfectly; however, with this line, it’s clear that the pair of them have a similar idea about what the role of the legal system actually is.
When it comes down to it, Hamilton and Perry don’t want to “win”; what they both want is for justice to be done. If justice means that one of them has to “lose”, then so be it, because when it comes to the legal system, there can be no winning and losing; there can only be the truth, and the decisions made when that truth is revealed.
The Original Perry Mason Is The Blueprint For Modern Legal Procedurals
The original Perry Mason TV show is the blueprint for every legal procedural show that has come afterward. From Boston Legal to Suits, just about every legal show has Perry Mason to thank for crafting a legacy that has made the genre infinitely watchable in just about every form it takes.
Perry Mason made sure that the cases were the most interesting part of every episode, and it’s that lesson that later legal shows have been able to draw from and alter in any way they’ve seen fit. Perry Mason proved viewers do not get bored of the courtroom, and networks and streamers have mined the setting successfully for years afterward.
- Release Date
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1957 – 1966-00-00
- Directors
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Arthur Marks, Andrew V. McLaglen, Irving J. Moore, Allen H. Miner, Harmon Jones, Arthur Hiller, Francis D. Lyon, Anton Leader, Earl Bellamy, Gerd Oswald, Lewis Allen, Richard Donner, Buzz Kulik, Gerald Mayer, Jack Arnold, John English, John Peyser, Robert Ellis Miller, Ted Post, Vincent McEveety, Walter Grauman, Richard Kinon, Charles F. Haas, Charles R. Rondeau
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Barbara Hale
Della Street
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Peggy McCay
Margaret Layton
