By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com

SOME CRITICS think Rex Stout's legendary detective Nero Wolfe is what you might get if you put Sherlock Holmes and his obese brother, Mycroft, in a blender and mixed them all together: An indolent middle-aged fat guy with such brilliant deductive powers that he never needs to leave his easy chair.

Yet there are others who think Stout really just figured out a masterful way to blend the traditional British "armchair detective" story with the American "hardboiled" school of mystery when he first gave us Nero Wolfe and his trusty sidekick Archie Goodwin back in 1935.

"Does either one of those theories make sense to you?" I asked actor Maury Chaykin last year when we first talked about him being cast as TV's new Nero Wolfe.

"Absolutely," he said, quite whimsically. "They sound like pretty good theories to me."

That was about the time I reached the conclusion that Chaykin was tackling the whole Nero Wolfe thing with tongue in cheek, which, in retrospect, I think was probably the smartest thing he could do.

Here's my reasoning on that point: Nero Wolfe is a bear of a character to play because so much about him is below the surface. Some fine actors have tried Wolfe on before--most notably the great movie character actor Edward Arnold in the 1930s and William Conrad, TV's former "Cannon," in the early 1980s. The results weren't commercially viable and nobody much liked what they did with Nero Wolfe on either the big screen or the small one.

Now Chaykin's hat is in the ring with the backing of the A&E cable television network, which premiered its first Nero Wolfe movie, "The Golden Spiders," last year and this Sunday launches a new series of two-hour Nero Wolfe movies, filmed in Toronto and starring Canadian actor Chaykin as Wolfe with American Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton as Archie.

The first one, "The Doorbell Rang," plays from 8-10 p.m., which means its second hour goes up against the first hour of CBS' "Murder on the Orient Express," the much-filmed Agatha Christie mystery, featuring a new Hercule Poirot: Alfred Molina, the rather chubby and cantankerous mayor from last year's hit movie "Chocolat."

There are lots of reasons why one should pity Chaykin for the job he's taking on. For one thing, Nero Wolfe is every bit as eccentric as Christie's Poirot, but lacks the little Belgian sleuth's great wit and charm. Wolfe is a glutton, a heavy drinker and a man with few social graces most of us would find admirable. In other words, he's a detective that it's a little hard to like, unless you're simply drawn to him for his massive intellect, which is indeed prodigious.

Wolfe also is not much for action. He seldom leaves his multi-floor apartment and spends most of his time tending his orchids and eating. That means the real active part of the detecting is left to Archie, his down-to-earth aide, who does all his leg work, then stands back while Wolfe draws the conclusions from the evidence Archie has hauled into his suite of rooms.

That worked well for Stout in literary terms because action isn't as necessary in a book as it is in a film. On film, though, that almost guarantees that we're going to be much more interested in what Archie is doing than what Nero finally gets around to deducing. Hence: On film, Archie seems to be the star.

In practical terms, the A&E movies seem to feel that way, too, since Timothy Hutton is front and center most of the time while Chaykin slides into a supporting stance.

Still, Chaykin loves the character and isn't intimidated by the forces that seem to be gathering to make Nero Wolfe such a tough sell to viewers. He suggests, in fact, that we look at him a little more closely and maybe we'll see in him what Chaykin sees.

"What I find most memorable about him are the illusions he has about himself," he told me during our interview. "He has created a world of his own and fixed it so that he can live in it and enjoy everything about it."

That's certainly true. Wolfe has used his intelligence to make himself reasonably wealthy, then has used his wealth to build a hobbyist's dream house in which he can exist, indulging all his favorite pleasures, without having to go out in the world.

"He feels like an outsider in the world," says Chaykin, "so he has created an environment for himself that protects him from the world."

But isn't it possible that Nero Wolfe is really a case in need of treatment? Doesn't that sound like the great detective really is a victim of the phobia that makes some people totally unable to leave their homes? Chaykin concedes that may be so.

"This man has a hard time even walking down the street," he said. "It's a trauma for him. It's a trauma for him to drive a car. It's even traumatic for him to even imagine himself out in the world. Yet he's managed to find a way to relate to society anyway."

And that's certainly true, too. Wolfe has gained the respect of the police and has become a sort of New York celebrity, even though few have ever seen him.

Chaykin also believes Wolfe is a nice guy at heart and even sees the humor in his own ludicrous lifestyle. Though he can become extremely petty, even with Archie and the household staff, Chaykin recalls that he's been known to apologize for his behavior, perhaps out of fear that they'll leave him to fend for himself.

"He has a very deep and dependent relationship with Archie," says Chaykin. "I mean Archie lives there in the house with him. It's not a casual thing. There's an intensity about it. He really needs Archie. But Archie needs him, too."

Chaykin is ready to acknowledge that Wolfe may not be the most dedicated of "consulting detectives." In fact, from his reading of Stout's many novels, he has concluded "detective work is his least favorite thing to do." He says Wolfe really doesn't like to do work of any kind, but he takes on detective cases because "it's the only thing that can support his lifestyle in terms of dollars and cents."

Still, that's not a very compelling reason to become a Nero Wolfe fan. And that may be why the A&E "Nero Wolfe" movies are likely to count heavily on Hutton's Archie Goodwin--a freewheeling, sassy sort of character--to make most of the friends for the series.

But once Archie gets us into Nero's lair, Chaykin hopes to give us a really interesting portrait of this most bizarre of American classic detectives--and maybe make us really look beneath the surface of this curious man for the first time on screen.

© 2001 by Ron Miller.

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