After two seasons, the drama with Matthew Rhys in the lead has been dropped. The series is created by Robert Downey Jr.’s Team Downey and is a remake of the popular courtroom drama from the 1950s and 1960s. This year, HBO’s Perry Mason is still a candidate for prizes. Four Emmy nominations for its debut season, including Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Rhys.
The first season of “Perry Mason” arrived with excellent ratings and some talk regarding awards, earning nominations for both Rhys and Season 1 supporting actor John Lithgow. While Season 2 did not perform as well in terms of numbers, it did manage to garner more positive reviews.
Perry (Rhys) and Della (Juliet Rylance) handle civil matters in Season 2, which is set in the worst year of the Great Depression, as opposed to the arduous job that criminal law implies. Los Angeles is consumed by an open-and-shut case, and Perry’s quest for justice discovers that not everything is as it seems. With Perry in jail, the Season 2 conclusion left viewers hanging. Let’s find out why HBO cancelled the beloved show.
Why HBO cancelled Perry Mason?
HBO said in a statement with Deadline that it was “deeply appreciative of the remarkable work of Matthew Rhys and the unmatched cast and crew of Perry Mason for their reimagining of such a treasured and storied franchise.” While we won’t be continuing the series with a new season, we are eager to collaborate with Team Downey’s talented creatives on new projects.
Given the fee we charge for each show, each has a task to do and a viewership. Component, a critical reaction component, and of course, the buzz a show generates are all factors. We always consider and talk about these factors while deciding whether or not to renew a show, she added. “We have to play everything out and see how they do,” said the actor playing Perry Mason. “That factors in for Perry Mason, for Winning Time, for instance, for Gilded Age.”
Who starred in Robert Downey Jr.’s Perry Mason?
Matthew Rhys played the title character in the television series, which was based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s characters. The HBO series depicts Mason’s early life as a private investigator in Los Angeles in the 1930s, in contrast to the 1950s TV series in which Mason worked as a lawyer.
The Season 2 cast also featured Sean Astin, Tommy Dewey, Shea Whigham, Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk, Diarra Kilpatrick, Eric Lange, Justin Kirk, Katherine Waterston, Hope Davis, Fabrizio Guido, Peter Mendoza, Mark O’Brien, Paul Raci, Jen Tullock, Jon Chaffin, Onahoua Rodriguez, Jee Young Han, Wallace Langham, and Rhys.
For television, Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones created the series through Team Downey, Amanda Burrell, Robert Downey Jr., and Susan Downey executive produced. Season 2’s executive producers and showrunners were Jack Amiel and Michael Begler. Along with Joe Horacek and Tim Van Patten, who helmed the majority of Season 1, Rhys acted as an executive producer. Co-executive producer Regina Hyman worked on the project. The fans will surely be heartbroken after reading this; well, we feel you, Perry Mason lovers!