Nero Wolfe: The Complete Classic Whodunit Series
by Bill Duke
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bill Smitrovich, Colin Fox, Maury Chaykin, R.D. Reid, Timothy HuttonDirector: Bill Duke
Brand: A and E Home Video
Cinematographer: Mike Fash
Producer: Delia Fine
Producer: Howard Braunstein
Producer: Michael Jaffe
Producer: Susan Murdoch
Writer: Paul Monash
Writer: Rex Stout
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1496 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video
Product features:
- Twenty episodes from the A&E series NERO WOLFE are collected on this release. Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) and Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton) are a crime-fighting team whose methods differ wildly. But when they are together Wolfe and Goodwin always get results, with the dynamic duo bringing a variety of miscreants to justice. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION Rating: NR Age:&nb
Movie Reviews of Nero Wolfe: The Complete Classic Whodunit Series
Movie Review: Larger Than Life
Summary: 5 Stars
Rex Stout died in 1975, 25 years before the pilot episode "The Golden Spiders" aired for A&E Network's incarnation of his larger-than-life creation. Had he lived to see it, it is easy to imagine that he would have been delighted with "Nero Wolfe".
Stout's whodunits sailed under stiff comic breezes, freighted with corpses but sparing of grisly details. His sleuth is a ratiocinating detective in the manner of Sherlock Holmes who never leaves his home on business, never discusses his cases at meals, dresses fastidiously, and adheres to a strict daily routine he is loath to interrupt regardless what is at issue, money or murder. He is a 280-pound gourmand with a passion for orchids, beer, books, and leisure. His vocabulary is vast and he employs it as detectives of the hard-boiled variety use their fists. He solves all of his cases by confronting suspects conveniently congregated for the denouement. He is arrogant, irascible, petulant, bombastic, and indifferent to the charms of the fairer sex. He is a genius. He is Nero Wolfe.
Our narrator is Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's live-in legman, detective, secretary, bookkeeper, consultant, and scourge. Fearless, impudent and jaunty, Archie is an even better dresser than Wolfe, possesses a steel trap memory, loves poker, corned beef sandwiches and milk, dances gracefully and has an eye for the ladies although he keeps his hands to himself. Wolfe hates to work and it is Archie's job to prod him into accepting the cases that finance their lives, the four-story brownstone on Manhattan's West 35th Street, Wolfe's resident chef and housekeeper Fritz, and the 10,000 orchids on the top floor.
Wolfe's antagonist, though never his adversary, is perpetually apoplectic Inspector Cramer of Homicide, who resents Wolfe's civilian intrusion into police business, his high-handed tactics, and his unimpeachable success rate.
Rex Stout wrote 73 Nero Wolfe stories from 1934 to 1975, a span of American history that began during Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats and extended through Richard Nixon's Watergate denials, a compass that embraced the Great Depression, swing music, World War II, bebop, the atomic bomb, Korea, McCarthyism, rock 'n roll, civil rights, the Space Age, Viet Nam, and feminism to name but a few of its salient influences. Nevertheless, from beginning to end, the characters of Wolfe, Archie, Fritz, and Cramer are as ageless and impervious to social weathering as the figures on Mount Rushmore.
The A&E Network aired 20 episodes of "Nero Wolfe" in 2001 and 2002. The series producers made two significant artistic decisions. First, they elected to retain a reverential regard for Rex Stout's text, incorporating narrative and dialog lifted directly from the author's pages. The interior of the brownstone, described in explicit detail in the original stories, is observed as exactly as an architect's elevations, including the colors of the chairs in Wolfe's office and the waterfall wall art that masks the peep hole in the adjoining front room. Second, they crystallized the series into one representative time period, circa 1953, a post-war moment epitomized by a certain exuberance in fashion and automobile design that informs both the smart look of the series and Archie's attitude and attire.
Timothy Hutton plays Archie Goodwin with superior panache. As an executive producer and the director of four of the episodes, Hutton had a strong hand in establishing the atmosphere and tone of the series.
Maury Chaykin is Nero Wolfe. Though he does not possess the "seventh of a ton" physique of the character, he more than carries his weight in the role. He growls, roars, huffs, snaps, states assuredly and remonstrates implacably. His voice modulates from unction to umbrage with forceful inflection and flawless pronunciation.
All the regulars from the novels and short stories are on hand. Colin Fox is dapper and correct as Fritz; Bill Smitrovich is a nest of angry hornets as Cramer; R.D. Reid is Cramer's phlegmatic assistant Sergeant Purley Stebbins. The A-Team detectives Saul Panzer (Conrad Dunn), Fred Durkin (Fulvio Cecere) and Orrie Cather (Trent McMullen) are on call for backup and omniscient newsman Lon Cohen (Saul Rubinek) of the "Gazette" is ever ready to trade insider gossip for scoops. Handy Doctor Vollmer, useful attorney Nathaniel Parker, and full-time orchid expert Theodore Horstmann make their appearances.
A versatile repertory cast handles the various clients, suspects and supporting characters. Kari Matchett, Boyd Banks, James Tolkan, Debra Monk, Mimi Kuzyk, Gary Reineke, Beau Starr, Robert Bockstael, Nicky Guadagni, Francie Swift, David Schurmann, Richard Waugh, Marian Seldes, Kathryn Zenna, Christine Brubaker and M.J. Kang deliver considerable vim and solid thespian chops.
Michael Small provides the swinging "Nero Wolfe" theme and incidental music.
Rex Stout wrote most of his Nero Wolfe whodunits for pulp magazines. When he began, he was a contemporary of luminous mystery writers Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The stories of all three were designed to be diversions, literary transports for an audience accustomed to reading as a primary form of entertainment. In their construction, subject matter, and import the work of these writers could scarcely be more different. What they shared was an exalted joy in the use of language. Hammett was relentlessly original. Chandler had a muscular gift for description and characterization. Rex Stout specialized in wordplay. His setting and characters were necessarily formulaic and his plots just clever enough to keep the pages turning. It is Stout's infusion of humor into Wolfe's sonorous prosody and Archie's sarcastic asides that endear the characters to us and rightfully canonize Nero Wolfe among detectives that dominate the fictional landscape. The A&E series does Wolfe justice and invigorates the monument.
Summary of Nero Wolfe: The Complete Classic Whodunit Series
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