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By
FRANK BEHRENS
As much as I admired the A&E
boxed set of the "Nero Wolfe" episodes that made
up the first season of that show, my admiration
has increased as I watched "Nero Wolfe - The
Complete Second Season." Aside from the fact that
Wolfe is shown to be considerably more human (I
think there was some adverse feedback from viewers
about his harshness in the first season), the
humor is still intact, the flowing photography is
still more cinematic than on most television fare,
and the 1950s décor is still nostalgically good to
watch.
The first four DVDs contain one long and two short
episodes. Here I must really object to A&E's
releasing them in full screen format when they
were obviously shot in 16:9 ratio. All too often
characters just barely seen at the edges of the
picture are speaking and the change in format
becomes annoying. To add insult to injury, a fifth
DVD gives us some bonus material, one of which is
an episode from earlier in this set shown in 16:9!
But the other two bonuses are the very first Wolfe
telecast that inspired the series, "The Golden
Spiders," and a documentary on "The Making of Nero
Wolfe."
Kudos to those wonderful supporting players like
Kari Matchett who play completely different
characters in almost every episode; and to the
regulars like Maury Chaykin (Wolfe), Timothy
Hutton (Archie), Colin Fox (Fritz), and Bill
Smitrovich (Cramer).
Now if we can get the wide screen versions, that
would be wonderful. But even in this format, this
series is a real treat. |
