Just a slow prolongation of the usual half-hour agony. Raymond Burr... gave a sterling performance as Perry Mason. It wasn't enough to hypo a script padded with lengthy, irrelevant conversations.
The stories are not even interesting; they are just hack work, the complicated unravelling of crimes that do not seem to matter, among people without character in scenes without colour. The whole thing might have come out of a can.
It is easily the best detective serial made thus far in this country... Mr. Burr's portrayal, in the courtroom scenes, has stature and sincerity. He, and the others connected with the program, are giving us an interesting homicidal puzzle.
An hour is a comfortable length of time in which to snarl up a situation and ravel it without too much excess motion. Raymond Burr, in the role of the private eye and lawyer, struck me as thoroughly fit and competent for the part.
