Nero Wolfe Season 1 1981 There were only 14 episodes in the series and then it was cancelled. Half the stories are loosely based on Rex Stout's novels, the other half are original stories. There's a definite effort to make Wolfe more human and that weakens the character in my mind.
There's a whole new cast with Frank Conrad as Nero Wolfe and Lee Horsley as Archie Goodwin. George Voskovec plays Nero's chef Fritz Brenner, Robert Coote plays Nero's orchid man Theodore Horstmann, George Wyner plays Saul Panzer and Allan Miller plays Inspector Cramer. I liked the cast for the most part, though I thought George and Allan were a bit wrong for their characters.
There's a good guest cast including Richard Anderson, Delta Burke, John de Lancie, David Hedison, Robert Loggia, Darren McGavin, Barry Nelson, John Randolph, Russ Tamblyn and Lana Wood.
There's a nice brownstone set and a nice orchid room. There's plenty of location shooting and a few fights here and there. They keep a good level of humor going and that's appealing.
I enjoyed the series but it wasn't up to Friday night's hit The Dukes Of Hazard in the ratings. Moving it to Tuesday didn't save it. All gone. Compared to the recently seen Italian version of Nero Wolfe, this series pales, and the Italian version is really changed from the books. It carries it off with style and passion. And those nice old cars. Bellissimo!
The 1981 series doesn't fare well when compared to the 2001 A&E series either. Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin were highly entertaining as Wolfe and Goodwin. Each episode adapts a book and they don't keep everything from the original story. It still works well, the scripts are clever and the production captures the briskness of the books and the oddness of Nero Wolfe. Sadly they only produced two 10 episode series before A&E changed their format to attract the younger viewer with crappy reality TV. No matter, I don't watch A&E anymore and I haven't got anything good to say about them. I bought the DVDs of Tim and Maury's show and I can watch it anytime I want.
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