Perry Mason: Season 1, Volume 2

Erle Stanley Gardner's legendary legal eagle, whose book exploits have sold countless millions of copies all over the world, was brilliantly interpreted for the small screen by Raymond Burr in a memorable TV series that was a ratings powerhouse for nine years. The inaugural season found producer Gail Patrick Jackson trying to establish a workable formula for the show while retaining as much as possible of Gardner's intricate plots, and while she didn't always succeed initially, the 20 episodes from the second half of the 1957-58 first season compiled here feature some real pips. “The Case of the Rolling Bones,” adapted from one of Gardner's best early novels, involves an eccentric millionaire institutionalized by his unscrupulous niece and nephew and then accused of murder. In “The Case of the Gilded Lily,” Mason defends a newly married man arrested for killing someone who tried to blackmail him. And “The Case of the Terrified Typist” fixes attention on a nervous young woman who infiltrates Perry's office by posing as a temp-agency employee—and is later suspected of homicide. The formula seldom varied: the first half of every hour-long episode was devoted to plot exposition, character introduction, the discovery of a murder, and the arrest of someone invariably defended in court by Mason; the second half largely unfolded at the trial, where the various suspects were interrogated and the real killer always exposed. Presented on an extra-less five-disc set, this is recommended. (E. Hulse)