Nero Wolfe - The Complete First Season
Nero Wolfebrought Rex Stout's eccentric private investigator and his dapper legman, Archie Goodwin, into a jaunty and irreverent detective series for cable channel A&E; in the spring of 2001 (following the broadcast of a pilot episode in 2000).The Complete First Seasonincludes all the pleasures and surprises of the show's first mysteries, above all the tempestuous, symbiotic, and highly entertaining relationship between Wolfe (Maury Chaykin), a corpulent recluse who grows orchids and analyzes clues from a distance, and the acerbic knight-errant, Goodwin (Timothy Hutton, also an executive producer on the series), Wolfe's underpaid eyes and ears on the world. Set (more or less) in the late 1940s/early 1950s,Nero Wolfefinds these antithetic partners cracking tough cases and refusing to bow to authority, power, or wealth.The set begins with the complex, two-part "The Doorbell Rang" (directed by Hutton). A demanding heiress (Debra Monk) offers an enormous retainer to Wolfe, a high-living epicurean always in need of money, to prove her dubious claim that the FBI is harassing her. Once Wolfe takes the job, a murder is committed, and Archie hits the streets in search of answers. Hutton also directs the two-part "Champagne for One" with a snap and verve reminiscent of old Howard Hawks comedies, but it is on "Prisoner's Base" that all of the series' best elements are firing at once: Chaykin's performance as a prideful, narcissistic boy-man genius, Hutton's sleek heroics, and a tone largely more optimistic than the grave determinism of much detective fiction. The excellent "Eeny Meeny Murder Moe" finds the thin-skinned Wolfe apoplectic when a client is murdered in the sleuth's own brownstone, and worlds tumble when Archie discovers Wolfe might have a long-lost adopted daughter in "Over My Dead Body." All in all,Nero Wolferefreshes the television detective genre.--Tom Keogh