This ain't your parent's Raymond Burr version of the famous fictional lawyer. It's a completely new take. Gritty, dark and hard to watch at more than a few points, it's an origin story, and it is done in the style of film noir (not my favorite). Set in the early 1930s, the violence is visceral and graphic. Perry is an alcoholic, chain-smoking veteran with no small amount of PTSD from the Battle of Argonne. He works for a lawyer who has chops, but is fading. The lawyer manages to keep it together with his smart and sassy assistant, Della Reese. Paul Drake is now a Black police officer who struggles to walk the line of an impossible existence. The eight episodes of the first season cover a single, brutal crime. You want to know all the who and why? You have to watch all eight episodes. In true film noir fashion, even the ending isn't a real ending, not in the sense that everything is tied up in a neat bow. Things come to a natural pause, but a happy path is not in the cards here. Besides wanting to know what it was all about, I stuck in for two of the leads. Matthew Rhys can do nothing wrong, in my humble opinion. And Tatiana Maslany, continuing her tradition of being a chameleon, is transfixing, as usual. To make the story go eight episodes there are a lot of convoluted plotlines, most of which end up unfinished. The film-making here is outstanding but I don't know if I will watch season two. Ms. Maslany will not be back and the whole thing is just way too moody and dark. But I can't say the first season was bad. Not at all. So, it's a dilemma.
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