USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

Main: normal long no graphics Contact Log archives Best log entries Other articles Site Search

Stardate 20010722.2222 (On Screen): I am a big fan of the Rex Stout murder mystery series starring Nero Wolfe. When I designed a custom piece of equipment at one company, I named it after him. (I designed it, I get to name it.) But though I know both Wolfe and Goodwin intimately from many, many happy hours together, I've never really known what they look like. It's sort of like internet friends who you never meet and never see photographs of. So I was pleased and surprised recently to see them for the first time. Imagine my amazement to learn that Archie has been working undercover in Hollywood using the stage name "Timothy Hutton", to forward some investigation of Wolfe's, no doubt. This suspicion is confirmed by the fact that Wolfe himself has been undercover using the ludicrous name "Maury Chakin". No-one is really named that, and only someone like Wolfe could create a name like that and convince people it was genuine. (Wolfe is, of course, a liar of enormous stature when it pleases him to be.) As soon as I learned this, though, I recognized them both immediately. Yes, those are their faces. There can be no other.

Sometimes actors seem almost to have been designed for a role. There was actually an attempt once before to do a television series based on the Nero Wolfe books, but it was terrible. They made three major mistakes. First, they tried to make it contemporary instead of period. Second, they miscast Goodwin. Third and worst, they badly miscast Wolfe. Lee Horsley was completely unconvincing as Goodwin, and it's clear that William Conrad was cast as Wolfe solely because he was fat. But his previous TV series "Cannon" got in the way; to convert from a mobile detective in an action series to a sedentary cerebral one in Nero Wolfe didn't fly. It lasted one season and was dropped, unloved and unmourned.

But the estimable Hutton decided that he would make a decent Archie and his instincts in this were flawless. I occasionally see an actor in a role and thereafter cannot imagine anyone else playing it. I can no longer imagine anyone as Sherlock Holmes except the late Jeremy Brett, and indeed I can no longer imagine him in any other role. (What the heck was Sherlock Holmes doing in "My Fair Lady"?) Equally, I now can not imagine anyone else playing Goodwin, and I'm still having a hard time connecting the Hutton I'm seeing now with the actor in "Taps".

But as producer of the series, he made three other outstanding decisions. First, he decided to make it a period piece, and this works beautifully. Wolfe and Goodwin are creatures of the 1940's; they can't dwell in an age of computers (any more than Holmes can). Second, he cast Maury Chakin in the part of Wolfe, and like Hutton with Goodwin, I can no longer imagine anyone else playing the role. Part of the pleasure of the books was to read the bickering between the two, with Goodwin baiting Wolfe and Wolfe responding in kind, and these two men have both got their characters down so well that this conflict is even more delightful on screen, if that were possible. Finally, and most inspired of all, they decided to make it with a constant company of actors. Rather than casting guest stars each episode for all the non-regular parts, they put together a group of actors who fit the stereotypical roles that Stout tended to use, to be augmented with extras as needed. For instance, it's common for there to be a elderly patrician man, and any such role seems to be played by George Plimpton (who is not acting very far from type). Inevitably each story has one or more beautiful young women, and they have perhaps four such in their company. So a given actor will play one part this week, and an entirely different one the week after. The same actress who played a murderess in one story turned out to play the part of Carla Lovchen in another -- and I was surprised to see that her range was great enough that she really was able to play both convincingly.

If I have any complaint about the casting, it was the choice of Saul Rubinek to play Lon Cohen. While Rubinek is superb (as indeed are everyone in the cast) the problem is that he's too short. Cohen is at least six feet tall and has size 12 shoes. Rubinek is, I believe, about 5'7". On the other hand, in the pilot they had him play Saul Panzer and that was inspired. Regrettably, in the series proper someone else plays the Panzer role.

The Wolfe novellas will translate beautifully into one hour shows. Many of the full novels should be able to be converted into two-parters (as has already been done with "Over my Dead Body". Alas, some of the very best books won't be done because there's no way to do them justice in this format, and because I believe that the company loves these stories enough to not be willing to do them badly. For example, I will be very surprised if "In the Best Families" is ever done, and there's no possible way they can do "The Black Mountain". On the other hand, I'm looking forward eagerly to "Gambit" and "Before Midnight", and "Too Many Women" is going to be a delight. And I can't wait to find out what Marko Vukcic looks like.

None of the people working on this series are doing it to get rich. They're getting paid and they aren't starving, but A&E isn't exactly rolling with dough and even name actors like Hutton and Chaykin are not getting million-dollar paychecks for this. On the other hand, you can tell just by watching it that they're having a blast. A&E is not pushing them to meet an absurd schedule, so they're able t