As a fan of the show, I wish I would have liked the books better (see the handful of negative reviews).
Actually, the show isn't the books and the the books ain't the show. Stout's series started in the 30's and remained pretty much timeless so you could set a TV series virtually anywhere between 1934 and 1979 and it'd work just as long as you kept elements of the '30s milieu, which this interpretation does masterfully. It might be set in the '50s but it's really contemporary with every '30s detective from Nick Charles to Philo Vance and distinctly avoids both war-time and post war influences.
And setting it in the '50s was a stroke of genius - the series echos the background of an innocent era with a playfully darker underbelly that contemporary viewers can relate to much more easily as a '50s incarnation than a '30s, while maintaining a similar sense of style and class with the venerable '30s detectives: kind of like Nick Charles meets Cary Grant (To Catch a Thief).
As for Wolfe - you can play him straight or you can take liberties but, above everything, you have to keep the counterpoint between him and Archie. If Maury Chaykin had played it straight, we'd have to have had a different Archie; Hutton's lovable, wise-ass Archie would have fallen flat and the whole series would have morphed into something like the short-lived 1981 version with William Conrad.
Instead, Chaykin plays an infinitely more human, humane, insecure and likable Wolfe - a near-genius totally out to sea with the world who adapts by building his own little, self-contained, Brownstone Sanctuary. Chaykin's Wolfe is clearly using everything from his girth to his telephone as talismans to ward off that scary world beyond the front door - all implied in Stout's Wolfe but overshadowed by Wolfe's brilliance as well as each story's plot.
Loved everything about this version - everything, everything, everything and was devastated when it never made it to a 3rd season.
Actually, the show isn't the books and the the books ain't the show. Stout's series started in the 30's and remained pretty much timeless so you could set a TV series virtually anywhere between 1934 and 1979 and it'd work just as long as you kept elements of the '30s milieu, which this interpretation does masterfully. It might be set in the '50s but it's really contemporary with every '30s detective from Nick Charles to Philo Vance and distinctly avoids both war-time and post war influences.
And setting it in the '50s was a stroke of genius - the series echos the background of an innocent era with a playfully darker underbelly that contemporary viewers can relate to much more easily as a '50s incarnation than a '30s, while maintaining a similar sense of style and class with the venerable '30s detectives: kind of like Nick Charles meets Cary Grant (To Catch a Thief).
As for Wolfe - you can play him straight or you can take liberties but, above everything, you have to keep the counterpoint between him and Archie. If Maury Chaykin had played it straight, we'd have to have had a different Archie; Hutton's lovable, wise-ass Archie would have fallen flat and the whole series would have morphed into something like the short-lived 1981 version with William Conrad.
Instead, Chaykin plays an infinitely more human, humane, insecure and likable Wolfe - a near-genius totally out to sea with the world who adapts by building his own little, self-contained, Brownstone Sanctuary. Chaykin's Wolfe is clearly using everything from his girth to his telephone as talismans to ward off that scary world beyond the front door - all implied in Stout's Wolfe but overshadowed by Wolfe's brilliance as well as each story's plot.
Loved everything about this version - everything, everything, everything and was devastated when it never made it to a 3rd season.