Splendid, just splendid.

Just what we need … another rave review for A&E’s “Nero Wolfe”. Well, perhaps we will find a few things to say that haven’t been said before.

Alas, this fine series lasted only 2 seasons – actually, 1 more than I expected after I saw it. Not for the reason that it’s too high-end for the channel. We might do well to recall that at the time A&E was doing other high-quality (read: British) mysteries. The actual reason is much more organic. In the main Nero Wolfe is an extremely unattractive character. And Maury Chaykin is such a fine actor that he can’t help but bring this quality out and right in the viewer’s face.

Timothy Hutton, who played Archie Goodwin, also directed and co-produced the series. Brilliantly, by the way. One of his best touches was to downplay Wolfe (to the extent that this was possible) and up-play Archie. I believe we heard rumblings of “ego” at the time, but not so. Archie is a much, much more likeable character, especially when represented by Hutton’s puckish face. By giving more prominence to Archie Goodwin, Hutton gives the show a friendlier face and Wolfe becomes a foil for Archie instead of a less-pleasant center of attention. Still, Chaykin is so good – and in a rôle he was born to play -- that he tends to dominate any scene he’s in, but at least it’s not so much.

There also the question of the setting. Blurbs on this series indicate the setting is the 1950s. Now, while it is true that Stout was still writing Wolfe stories in that decade (they ranged from 1934 to 1985), there are problems. Chaykin turned 52 in 2001, the first year of the series. Wolfe would have been 52 in 1944, having been born in 1892, the son of Sherlock Holmes and “the woman”, Irene Adler. In the 1950s, Wolfe would have been in his 60s, rather than his 50s. Furthermore, the ambiance of the episodes seems ambivalent as to timing – as we might expect from a set of stories covering about 3 decades. The Depression, World War II, and the Korean War are not in evidence. Most of the episodes are not dateable, save to assume the date the story was published.

One episode, however, is absolutely dateable in the sense that it cannot be later than 1939/40. That is “Over My Dead Body”, in which a member of the Serb nobility is angling to sell logging concession in Bosnian forests to a U.S. company. This would have been absolutely possible during 1939/40-1945 because Europe was at war. It would have been even more impossible after 1945 because Yugoslavia was under the control of Tito and the Communist party. The original story was published in 1940 and presumably written earlier when Serb toffs might still be able to manipulate their nation’s resources for their own advantage.

As for the rest of the ambiance of the series, there are gadgets that appear more modern than the 1930s, but the Big Band era is still in full swing when pop music was already moving away from that and Frank Sinatra had already coined (or at least first used in a song) the ominous phrase “rock and roll”. On the whole, however, the whole effect is charming and effective, letting Wolfe’s world float in a Neverland of a generalized American past. Many of the colorful costumes and outfits lend credibly to this impression.

The various episodes move along crisply, with excellent and literate scripts. That’s another reason the program vanished so quickly: clever use of good vocabularies is of course a turn-off for most couch potatoes. One wonders how West Wing made it past its 1st season.

“Nero Wolfe” is in the best sense of the term presented by an ensemble cast. The main characters work well together, of course. But beyond this, a larger crew of actors appears again and again, playing different roles. This is far less disconcerting than we might imagine, owing to the talents of the actors and of the make-up/costuming people. It’s more disconcerting while watching the episodes seriatim rather than once a week.

It’s impossible to recommend this fine series too strongly. It’s one of the very few top-notch mystery programs not produced in Britain. Buy it or at least rent it and watch it all the way through. I’d give it 7 or 8 stars if I could.