April 23, 2001. There have been several attempts to bring Rex Stout's brilliant if somewhat pudgy detective to the big or small screen in the U.S. Two unimpressive movies in the thirties. A TV pilot in the late fifties with William Shatner as sidekick Archie Goodwin. A pilot/TV movie in the seventies that was pretty good but didn't air because the star, Thayer David, passed away. In 1981 we had the William Conrad version which we will graciously ignore.
But on this day A&E introduced the best (and so far last) version.
A Nero Wolfe Mystery was produced by Tim Hutton, a dedicated fan of the Corpus, who played Archie Goodwin (inexplicably, he gave the Ohio-born gumshoe a New York accent). Maury Chaykin was suitably grumpy as the fat man.
I used to reread Stout books as comfort food when I had a cold. Now I crank up a DVD of one of these.
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