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Nero Wolfe - The Complete Classic Whodunit Series
After introducing the world to the corpulent, irascible, indescribably brilliant private detective Nero Wolfe in 1934, author Rex Stout would pen at least one Wolfe story a year until his death in 1975, amassing over seventy tales of murder and mystery. Several attempts were made to bring the detective to the screen, including a pair of tepidly received film adaptations in the mid-'30s, a TV movie starring the late Thayer David, and a short-lived prime-time series on NBC. It would be nearly two full decades until the next attempt would be made to translate Nero Wolfe to television with A&E's feature-length adaptation of "The Golden Spiders". A weekly television series quickly followed, reteaming its cast and deservedly garnering immense critical praise in the process. A Nero Wolfe Mystery attracted a fiercely loyal following, though one that apparently wasn't large enough to keep A&E from cancelling the series after its second season. The past couple of years have seen DVD collections of each of those seasons, and now A&E has compiled the entire run of Nero Wolfe into this eight-disc boxed set. For a list of episodes and synopses of each of the twenty adaptations in this collection, TV.com has a reasonably comprehensive episode guide online.
Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) doesn't fit the traditional detective mold. He acts a detective purely because it gives him the means to support his lifestyle, and this creature of habit would just as soon devote all of his time tending to his orchids and feasting on the gourmet meals exactingly prepared by his Swiss chef Fritz (Colin Fox). Wolfe rarely relocates his seventh-of-a-ton bulk outside of his New York brownstone, preferring to spend much of his time mulling over cases in a leather chair in his office and pouring bottles of beer into a monogrammed glass. Still, someone has to do the legwork, and for Wolfe, that someone is Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton). Archie is as headstrong as Wolfe but has a vastly different temperment. Witty, smooth, tough, and libidinous, Archie drives most of the action in these mysteries, having a nasty tendency to stumble upon lifeless corpses and handles most of the investigation that inevitably follows. Toss in a gorgeous dame or two, an unlit-cigar-chomping police inspector (Bill Smitrovich) who intensely dislikes Wolfe but can't deny his talents, and a climactic meeting of all of the suspects in Wolfe's office shortly before he discloses the identity of the murder, and you're left with a structure that may sound formulaic but is never repetitive.
After introducing the world to the corpulent, irascible, indescribably brilliant private detective Nero Wolfe in 1934, author Rex Stout would pen at least one Wolfe story a year until his death in 1975, amassing over seventy tales of murder and mystery. Several attempts were made to bring the detective to the screen, including a pair of tepidly received film adaptations in the mid-'30s, a TV movie starring the late Thayer David, and a short-lived prime-time series on NBC. It would be nearly two full decades until the next attempt would be made to translate Nero Wolfe to television with A&E's feature-length adaptation of "The Golden Spiders". A weekly television series quickly followed, reteaming its cast and deservedly garnering immense critical praise in the process. A Nero Wolfe Mystery attracted a fiercely loyal following, though one that apparently wasn't large enough to keep A&E from cancelling the series after its second season. The past couple of years have seen DVD collections of each of those seasons, and now A&E has compiled the entire run of Nero Wolfe into this eight-disc boxed set. For a list of episodes and synopses of each of the twenty adaptations in this collection, TV.com has a reasonably comprehensive episode guide online.
Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) doesn't fit the traditional detective mold. He acts a detective purely because it gives him the means to support his lifestyle, and this creature of habit would just as soon devote all of his time tending to his orchids and feasting on the gourmet meals exactingly prepared by his Swiss chef Fritz (Colin Fox). Wolfe rarely relocates his seventh-of-a-ton bulk outside of his New York brownstone, preferring to spend much of his time mulling over cases in a leather chair in his office and pouring bottles of beer into a monogrammed glass. Still, someone has to do the legwork, and for Wolfe, that someone is Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton). Archie is as headstrong as Wolfe but has a vastly different temperment. Witty, smooth, tough, and libidinous, Archie drives most of the action in these mysteries, having a nasty tendency to stumble upon lifeless corpses and handles most of the investigation that inevitably follows. Toss in a gorgeous dame or two, an unlit-cigar-chomping police inspector (Bill Smitrovich) who intensely dislikes Wolfe but can't deny his talents, and a climactic meeting of all of the suspects in Wolfe's office shortly before he discloses the identity of the murder, and you're left with a structure that may sound formulaic but is never repetitive.
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