It’s set on a studio lot, a soap opera episode, the acting is atrocious, every single person is insincere in cast and crew, apart from the heroine, Perry and Della … plus the one I like … the crazy fan who gets in where she should not be and inadvertently saves the “legman” along the way. Another I liked was the chief helper, Mimi Hoyle.

The print is poor, otherwise it would not be allowed on youtube, but watchable. As mentioned earlier, it was Raymond Burr’s last episode as PM (1993, seems 80s to me). It was one of those where absolutely anyone could have killed the cad. The girl is charged, the real killer confesses on the stand.

Standard formula but it rightly has a good rating. The reviewer below did not fully get the tongue in cheek joke throughout that a formulaic detection and legal series should have a soap opera as its final episode (for Burr).

“Perry Mason enters the world of TV soap operas to defend Mile High star Kris Buckner (Genie Francis) who’s been framed for the murder of her co-star, Mark Stratton (Sean Kanan). Somebody spiked actress Charlotte Grant’s (Krista Tesreau) lipstick with walnut nut oil, knowing that the actor would kiss her in a scene and, as a result, has an allergic reaction. The crew fetch his allergy kit but that had been spiked too and he dies.

The police figure that Buckner killed her co-star because, on the day before he died, Stratton demanded that her part in the show be drastically cut by having her character go into a coma. In a rage, Kris struck Stratton on the face saying, “I could kill you for this.” To make matters worse, a duplicate allergy kit of the murdered man is discovered in her dressing room and she was seen re-entering the studio on the night before Stratton died.

Mason learns that Stratton was detested by all who worked on the show and many had reasons for wanting him dead. They include production assistant Mimi Hoyle (Karen Moncrieff) who was once Stratton’s lover and she became pregnant with his child. But, he demanded she have an abortion and threatened to have her fired if she did not.

The show’s producer, Evan King (Michael Tylo), also had a strong motive for murdering Stratton because it turns out that Stratton was putting pressure on the production company to axe him from the show so that he could take over completely.

Mason is puzzled as to why Stratton appeared to have so much control over the running of the show because, after all, he was only the leading man. Mason sends Ken Malansky (William R Moses) to the rural town of Cedar Grove – Stratton’s home town – where an unsolved murder from thirty years ago could hold the key to the killer’s real identity.

This was Raymond Burr’s final appearance in his most celebrated role as the Los Angeles defence attorney in what seemed like a never ending series of revival movies that began with Perry Mason Returns in 1985. Burr sadly died in 1993.

Overall with these films, if you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all. However, there were a few exceptions where the series successfully broke away from the routine courtroom drama formula, but this one is purely standard fare. If you love the series, as I do, then you will love it and for somebody who has never seen an episode before then its not a bad place to start as the storyline has enough to keep one engaged for a couple of hours and the script generally plays fair with the audience.

The supporting cast, while undeniably second league, is more than competent and Arleen Sorkin is good as an irritatingly obsessive soap fan, Peg Furman, who gets under Malansky’s hair as he does his usual heavy lifting in order to track down vital witnesses and clues for his boss – as ever, risking his life in the process.

Except that Furman, as much as Malansky wanted her out of the way, turns out to be useful, as she unwittingly holds a vital clue to the killer’s identity as a result of her sneaking into the TV studio and stealing a copy of Mark Stratton’s script. A coffee stain bearing the indentation of the murdered man’s personalised mug on the script helps Mason unravel the mystery.”