Episode 90 is here!
And, yes, there is a brand-new old show joining the ranks. And, yes, you may have guessed what it is.
Let's go down the roster!
Tim S. Turner and Dan talk Nero Wolfe.
Dan covers another episode of Shadow Chasers.
Someone we like is back to discuss episode 1 of ????
Please, listen and enjoy.
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Hello again.
ReplyDeleteThis is mostly going to be Nero Wolfe again.
The other two shows are after my time, so to speak.
Lack of DVD availability doesn't help.
First things first:
The main problem with "Might As Well Be Dead": it's a novel.
If this show had a two-hour format, they might have had a shot
A&E would have done this as a two-parter; their single hour shows were based on the novellas.
The screenwriter here was Seeleg Lester, who'd spent much of the early '60s as chief writer of Perry Mason; there, his chief job was compressing Mason novels (which were about the same length as Wolfe novels of the same period) into 50-minute teleplays.
Erle Stanley Gardner's novels lent themselves better to such compression than Rex Stout's would have, and there you are.
I'm noting that you and Tim seem to be caught up in the trimmings here, as opposed to the plots.
I'll guess here that you're not aware that George Voskovec passed away in 1981, while the Wolfe series was still in first run.
Also, Robert Coote passed on himself about a year later.
So that's two cast members who would have had to be replaced for Season Two, if that had come about.
Also, I've learned that Wolfean purists were bestirring themselves in resistance to the NBC version, mainly about what they felt was industrial-strength miscasting of the brownstone regulars.
I have in hand a copy of The Mystery Fancier, a fanzine from 1981 (Vol. 5, No. 3), which features a fulminating screed from Cap'n Bob Napier (a regular contributor here) called "Wolfe A Howler!", which pretty well sums it up.
Napier is a super-purist here; his knowledge of film and TV is virtually nil.
He buys in toto the tale that they had a shot at getting Orson Welles to play Wolfe (Facts: Welles was offered Wolfe twice, by ABC in '77 and by NBC in '81, and bugged out both times for his own "reasons").
Napier says that Conrad is wrong for Wolfe, mainly because he's too short and his voice is not "commanding" (as he puts it).
Lee Horsley is OK as Archie, but they didn't let him narrate the stories, which takes half his job away.
Voskovec's Fritz is also OK, but the producers give half his camera time to Robert Coote, whom Napier feels is miscast as Theodore.
There's a lot more here, but suffice to say that Cap'n Bob Napier disapproves of the Conrad Wolfe, for many of the things that you and Tim like about it.
Well, to each his own, as the Ink Spots used to sing (and on another plane probably still do); I just thought I'd pass it along.
As I said above, I'm letting the other two shows slide, due to lack of (my) interest; maybe things will get better later on …