If you remember Raymond Burr and his 1950’s “Perry Mason” television series that was based on the novels of Erle Stanley Gardner, then you’re old.

If you remember that Barbara Hale played his girl Friday, Della Street, then you’re VERY old and you don’t care who knows it. It’s time to move on.

This first-hour-long segment of the new “Perry Mason” on HBO opens with a shabby, nervous couple hiding in a ratty hotel room overlooking the Angels Flight trolley station in downtown LA.

They have a suitcase full of money to deliver to kidnappers who have their infant son.

In a rat-infested alley, they hand over the money, and momma reclaims the infant. Once on the trolley, momma opens the blanket to kiss the baby, and the hour and the show begin.

We are now in Raymond Chandler country, cinea-ground that will one day produce future Masons like Dick Powell, Robert Mitchum and Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes.

I don’t think it was an accident that this Perry Mason is lit and wallpapered with the colors and blood of “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential.”

To put as much distance between their “Perry Mason” and the old black-and-white private eyes that Turner Classics has ground into the earth, producers Ron Fitzgerald and Rolin Jones go to extreme lengths to surprise us.

Our new Mason is Matthew Rhys (“Brothers and Sisters”, “The Americans”), a private detective who exists on his long dead family’s dairy farm on the edge of a rent-a-plane dollar a ride airport just outside job of 1930’s Los Angeles.

He’s a World War I vet with PTSD, a drinking problem, two cows (the first private eye who milks his own cows?) a house and a barn Steinbeck’s Joad family would drive by without stopping.

Perry has only one suit that he shares with moths, a ratty jacket, and a great film noir fedora. These are all the required accoutrements of a ’30s PI, and Rhys moves in them like they’re his own clothes. Perry is divorced, has a little boy who returns his Christmas gifts unwrapped, and pays for his diner suppers and booze by chasing cheating husbands with a camera.

The intro segment begins with a view of one such husband, a man whose body redefines obese, eating lemon cream pie from the navel of his girlfriend. He turns out to be a movie star the studio is paying Mason to follow, based on the infamous Fatty Arbuckle.

The real story begins when a wealthy old family friend, the wonderful John Lithgow, arrives, steps through the cow dung and dirty dishes, with an offer to help with the kidnapping case, now highly publicized.

“You’ll have to appear as an expert witness in court, so wear your best suit.”

Perry shows him what’s hanging on the door.

“This is my best suit.”

Lithgow winces, “ By the way you’ve got egg on that rag of a tie.”

“It’s mustard,” Perry clarifies in a later scene.

In previews we are promised to meet Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black,) as the popular evangelist modeled on the era’s Aimee Semple McPherson, and Chris Chalk as a beleaguered cop.

The impeccable character actor Shea Whigham is along as Perry’s best friend. Of course, every PI has one of those to banter with.

This whole ride depends on who’s driving, and that would be Matthew Rhys, a rocket ride away from his communist spy in “The Americans.”

Juliet Rylance is aboard as the new Della Street, a closeted lesbian with dreams of being a lawyer.
I repeat: the tone, the color and lighting and camera work are all stunning and powerfully evocative, designed to draw us in for eight weeks, so we don’t have to keep watching “Chinatown’ over and over.

“Perry Mason” runs each Sunday on HBO at 9 p.m.

J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and screen actor.

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