Matthew Rhys investigates a child kidnapping in the first trailer for HBO’s Perry Mason series 

HBO revealed the first official trailer for its rebooted Perry Mason series on Friday.

The brooding crime show features The Americans’ Matthew Rhys, 45, in the title role as a detective–turned–criminal defense attorney as he investigates a child’s kidnapping.

The project was originally intended to be a film starring Robert Downey Jr., though he dropped out and brought the project to HBO after he signed on to more Marvel films through Avengers: Endgame.

Though Mason is best known from the 1950s and ’60s television series starring Raymond Burr as a criminal defense attorney, the film noir–influenced series is set in 1931, when he’s still a detective.

The clip opens with a montage of Mason walking down empty corridors as he’s greeted by Elias Birchard ‘E.B.’ Jonathan, played by John Lithgow.

‘Mr. Mason, certain matters require discretion and finesse. It’s the kind of thing you’re good at,’ says Jonathan.

The action cuts to a living room as he meets with a family looking for assistance.

‘It’s a fancy word for a busybody,’ he says of being a detective as the trailer cuts to him breaking in to an apartment.

Back at his own place, he shares a drink with a woman who seems to have him sized up.

‘It’s very easy for you to break the rules, isn’t it? And you never accept any help,’ she says while seizing him up over a drink.

Then there’s a quick cut as Mason gets chased out of a house by a screaming woman while his partner Pete Strickland (Shea Wigham) starts up their getaway car.

In a meeting with the pastor Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), Mason learns that a member of a growing evangelic Christian movement in LA has had their baby kidnapped.

After the meeting, he goes to the morgue to see the body of the child killed in the kidnapping attempt, which seems to turn his stomach once the sheet is pulled back.

‘The devil put Charlie Dodson in this box,’ says the platinum-haired Sister Alice, played by Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany as she addressed the massive church gathering.

After she expresses reservations about Mason in a subsequent meeting, he says, ‘I’m the only person for this job,’ over a montage of his exploits in the trenches of the First World War.

‘Do you want to know things, or do you want to prove things?’ she asks him later when he stops by her place at night.

We also get a hint of the trouble he’ll face in the course of his investigation when a group of thugs restrain him in a deserted movie studio and heat the barrel of a revolver with a lighter, before branding him on the chest with the hot metal until he lets out a piercing scream.

Next, over a montage of Sister Alice’s impassioned preaching, Mason suggests the conspiracy is far wider than he first realized.

‘The cops, the church, everybody,’ he whispers.

The action cuts to a hint of trouble facing Sister Alice as she furiously runs down a residential street while her face is covered in blood.

The trailer ends with a montage of violent scenes, followed by Mason admitting, ‘I’m just about out of moves,’ while standing atop a dam with Strickland.

‘You said “just about out of moves.” So what’s the move?’ says he partner.

Rhys, a Welsh actor, is best known for his lead role on The Americans, which earned him an Emmy.

His recent film roles have included high-profile parts as the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg in Steven Spielberg’s The Post (2017) and as a troubled journalist opposite Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers in A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (2019).

Perry Mason is set to premiere on HBO on June 21.