The television industry had firmly established itself by the year 1955 and Gardner started getting some very attractive offers to put on his favourite character Perry Mason on the small screen. It is said he even overthrew a million-dollar offer from a reputed production house for the complete TV rights. No doubt the bad memories regarding the Perry Mason films were still not totally out of his mind besides the less satisfying radio experience. Therefore, Gardner demanded total control of his character once again. Therefore he finally set up a TV production company of his own and named it Paisano Productions.

Revitalizing Perry Mason for TV enabled Gardner to expel the soap opera features that had found their way into the radio plots. At the time when CBS purchased the series, the "pure" Perry Mason elements namely those of the investigative lawyer crept into the TV show at the same time not totally abandoning the soap opera elements. In fact, they were crafted into "The Edge of Night" and taken to TV as daytime soap opera. This immensely popular program ran on the TV for over twenty-five years.

In the meantime, it was taking more time than what was originally estimated at paisano to get a TV show together. Gardner approached his old friend and agent Cornwell Jackson to help him out. Jackson finally succeeded at Paisano Productions to get the show together and also appointed a beautiful former actress as the executive producer of the show.

Gail Jackson was very familiar with the show biz and also the legal profession. It was indeed a challenging task for a woman to take on the job of an executive producer in the man's world of TV production. However she successfully had total control of Paisano and got it moving. Frist and foremost, Jackson tackled auditioning dozens of actors who appeared for test for the part of the world's most famous lawyer. Jackson also had to face the difficult job of getting the necessary scripts written and approved.

Raymond Burr was finally chosen for the lead role, while William Hopper played Paul Drake, Barbara Hale as Della, William Talman as Hamilton Burger, and Ray Collins as Lieutenant Tragg. Once everything was right, Gardner advised his troops to inform the networks that Perry Mason was finally "available."