Perry Mason: The Case of the Telltale Talk Show Host

Mariette Hartley is being pestered by someone, so she calls in old friend Raymond Burr for advice, legal and personal. When Regis Philbin, her boss at the talk radio channel she works at, is killed, she's on trial for hiring the hitman. Good thing Perry Mason is her friend and lawyer. That means it's only until the end of the show until someone confesses on the witness stand.

This one has more humor than usual, with Barbara Hale, playing Della Street, plying Burr with various tisanes. By this point, the role of William Moses as Ken Malansky, Perry's investigator, is overtly humorous. Of course he gets knocked around. Of course he teams up with a beautiful woman to investigate. This is in hilarious contrast to his boss' dealing with witnesses, all of whom he hits.... with a subpoena.

It's the next to last time Burr would play Erle Stanley Gardner's lawyer-investigator. Despite Miss Hale's healthful concoctions, he would die before this TV movie aired.

After a series of threats Dr Sheila Carlin (Mariette Hartley) calls her friend Della (Barbara Hale) who along with Perry (Raymond Burr) and Ken (William R. Moses) comes to assist. With Sheila believing it is someone at the radio station where she works behind the threats Perry agrees to go in to be interviewed on air by Winslow Keene (Regis Philbin) who not only hosts a show but is the station owner. When Keene informs everyone that there are going to be changes to everyone's shows it doesn't go down well especially as he will sack anyone who complains. After Sheila confronts Winslow over things she ends up sacked but then later on chief suspect when Winslow is murdered. Fortunately she has Perry, Della and Ken in her corner who set about solving who it was who hired a hitman to kill Winslow.

Starts out well with the "suspect" getting gaslighted, however that story goes out of the window and it treads the usual formula - it's an ok entry, though gets heavily convoluted and not too engaging. Routine entry with some weak moments.

6/10 - Perry and the gang are back for an entertaining whodunnit

This TV movie about a fictional talk radio station owner's murder has location shots in Denver. (It is not about the assassination of radio host Alan Berg there by the Aryan Brotherhood in 1984).

Filmed in 1992, the cast includes some notable names from the decade.

The facial expressions Mason directs toward G. Gordon Liddy are priceless. Better yet, Liddy stoically inhabits his own political/media personality with dialogue and body language- the original right-wing firebrand.

Also interesting to see Mariett Hartley and Montel Williams cast early on in their careers.

Burr delivers some astute subpoena-serving and courtroom dialogue, even if plot credulity is a stretch.

Raymond Burr and the team are called in to defend Mariette Hartley, a friend of Barbara Hale's who is a psychologist with call in talk show on a talk radio station run by Regis Philbin. When Philbin is shot to death, Hartley is arrested for his murder.

One big problem with Perry Mason: The Case Of The Telltale Talk Show Host is the casting of Regis Philbin as the victim. Of course as they go in Perry Mason movies there are loads of alternative suspects. Philbin was going to revamp his whole station format and that got all of his stars very upset. Now Regis is a great host of a talk show himself, but as a no good slime bag of a station owner, well let's face it, the man is not an actor.

In this episode we see who murders Philbin, it's a contract killing and Hartley is rather elaborately framed for the crime. The hit-man however can't get to his money right away and as it turns out he's one unstable fellow. I would think you would need better nerves for that line of work. Anyway his instability gives away the individual who hires him. In fact the very elaborateness of the crime should give you some idea of the murderer if you look down the cast list.

Still it's a good entry in the Mason series, but I really would not have cast someone with that big a reputation as a nice guy as the mean victim, especially not someone who couldn't be mean on screen if he tried.