A Nero Wolfe Mystery - Adapting The Stories For The A&E Series

Adapting The Stories For The A&E Series

"It was a screenwriting assignment unlike any other that my writing partner, William Rabkin, and I had ever been involved with," wrote screenwriter Lee Goldberg in the November 2002 issue of Mystery Scene magazine. "Because Nero Wolfe, starring Maury Chaykin as Wolfe and Timothy Hutton as Archie, was unlike any other series on television. It was, as far as I know, the first TV series without a single original script — each and every episode was based on a Rex Stout novel, novella, or short story. That's not to say there wasn't original writing involved, but it was Stout who did all the hard work."

Goldberg and Rabkin adapted four Nero Wolfe stories — Champagne for One, Prisoner's Base, "Murder Is Corny" and "Poison à la Carte" — for A Nero Wolfe Mystery. In his article "Writing Nero Wolfe," Goldberg provides a unique inside look at the process of adapting Rex Stout for the A&E TV series:

Everyone who wrote for Nero Wolfe was collaborating with Rex Stout. The mandate from executive producers Michael Jaffe and Timothy Hutton (who also directed episodes) was to "do the books," even if that meant violating some of the hard-and-fast rules of screenwriting. Your typical hour-long teleplay follows what's known as a four-act structure. ... But Nero Wolfe ignored the formula, forgoing the traditional mini-cliffhangers and plot-reversals that precede the commercial breaks. Instead, we stuck to the structure of the book, replicating as closely as possible the experience of reading a Rex Stout novel...

"It's amazing how many writers got it wrong," says Sharon Elizabeth Doyle, who was head writer for Nero Wolfe. "I mean very good writers, too. Either you get it or you don't. It's so important to have the relationships right, and the tone of the relationships right, to get that it's about the language and not the story. The characters in these books aren't modern human beings. You have to believe in the characters and respect the formality of the way they are characterized. ... There is a pleasure in Wolfe's speeches, what we call the arias," says Doyle. "Wolfe has lots of them, the trick is isolating that one aria you can't live without."

The filmmakers have remained as scrupulously faithful to the original stories as possible, even to the point of retaining the different time settings — this season's episodes have jumped from the 1940s to the 1960s and back without a care. ... What a stunner it is to find them translated so effectively to television.

— S.T. Karnick, National Review

"There's something so dynamic and wonderful about Wolfe and Archie, Fritz and their whole world," Sharon Elizabeth Doyle told Scarlet Street magazine in 2002. Consulting producer for A Nero Wolfe Mystery, Doyle was the show's only full-time writer — overseeing the work of freelance screenwriters, and writing 11 of the teleplays herself:

"I do the most work on the dialogue," she says. "What Stout writes actually sounds good when you say it out loud, but the stuff that makes you laugh out loud and fall on the floor in the books doesn't work most of the time when you transpose it directly into actors' mouths. Frequently I end up moving words — tenderly and respectfully — but retaining as much of the language as possible. I feel a great belief in Rex Stout. I see the script process as writing his second draft."