1 9 8 1 (USA)
26 x 60 minute episodes
Reclusive detective and master criminologist Nero Wolfe was portrayed by William Conrad (Cannon) in this NBC series based on the 49 popular fiction books by Rex Stout, which had also been a successful radio series in the 1940s.
Lee Horsley (from Matt Houston) played his trusty assistant, private detective Archie Goodwin, who did most of the legwork as Wolfe refused to leave his house except under extreme provocation, and would not vary his schedule of tending his beloved orchids for four hours a day, not even to solve a murder.
Episodes were awash with suspects, but you never knew who the culprit was until Archie had gathered them all into Wolfe’s New York brownstone at 918 West 35th Street for the denouement.
That’s when rotund Wolfe, his belly stuffed with fine wines and food (he was a gourmet cook and a wine connoisseur), his orchids carefully tended, would announce through brilliant logic and deduction who the killer was.
Nero Wolfe
William Conrad
Archie Goodwin
Lee Horsley
