Set in New York City sometime in the 1940s–1950s, the stylized period drama stars Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe and Timothy Hutton as Archie Goodwin.

The series won praise for its high production values and jazzy score by Michael Small, and for preserving the language and spirit of the original stories.

Most of the teleplays were written by consulting producer Sharon Elizabeth Doyle and the team of William Rabkin and Lee Goldberg, whose "Prisoner's Base" was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

Grandly obese and famously eccentric, Wolfe is a genius who lives in—and rarely leaves—a large and comfortably furnished brownstone he owns on West 35th Street in Manhattan.

Wolfe maintains an inflexible schedule of reading, tending his 10,000 orchids in the rooftop plant rooms, and dining on the fine cuisine of his master chef, Fritz Brenner.

To support his opulent lifestyle and meet the payroll of his live-in staff, Wolfe charges high fees for solving crimes that are beyond the abilities of the police, most often the cigar-chewing Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide.

Wolfe sometimes calls upon freelance detectives Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather; but he depends upon his assistant Archie Goodwin, the street-smart legman whose wisecracking, irreverent voice narrates the stories.

"[5] Maury Chaykin is the armchair detective Nero Wolfe, a reclusive genius with little patience for people who come between him and his devotion to food, books and orchids.

A distinguishing feature of the series is its use of a repertory cast — Boyd Banks, Nicky Guadagni, Kari Matchett,[6] Debra Monk, George Plimpton, Ron Rifkin, Marian Seldes, Francie Swift, James Tolkan and many other accomplished Canadian and American actors — to play non-recurring roles.

"[7] "If a stylized, period series based solely on books wasn't enough to separate Nero Wolfe from other TV shows," reported Scarlet Street magazine, "[executive producer Michael] Jaffe decided to employ a returning repertory cast in the guest roles for each episode.

"[11][c] Independent producer Michael Jaffe's efforts to secure the rights to the Nero Wolfe stories date back to his earliest days in the business.

In the mid-1970s he established a friendship with the Stout estate and was working with his father, Henry Jaffe, a successful attorney turned producer, when the Nero Wolfe rights came on the market.

Warner Bros. wanted to adapt the Zeck trilogy for a feature film and approached Henry Jaffe, who traveled to New York to negotiate with the agent for Rex Stout's estate but lost out to Paramount Television.

The mandate from executive producers Michael Jaffe and Timothy Hutton (who also directed episodes) was to 'do the books,' even if that meant violating some of the hard-and-fast rules of screenwriting.

"[14] The filmmakers have remained as scrupulously faithful to the original stories as possible, even to the point of retaining the different time settings — this season's episodes have jumped from the 1940s to the 1960s and back without a care.

[16]: vii "That Nero Wolfe should be so pleasing has at least as much to do with the casting as the scripts," wrote author and cultural critic Terry Teachout in the National Review: Timothy Hutton plays Archie Goodwin, and I can't see how anyone could do a better job.

... Maury Chaykin has doubtless immersed himself in the Wolfe novels, for he brings to his interpretation of the part both a detailed knowledge of what Stout wrote and an unexpectedly personal touch of insight.

Last year, I spent a very late evening reading a very valuable edition of the Koran.On the eve of the premiere of Nero Wolfe, The Hollywood Reporter credited "the incredible attention to detail paid by production designer Lindsey Hermer-Bell and set decorator Odetta Stoddard, who not only re-create the world Stout so carefully described but also impart an overall feeling of stylishness and taste.

"Jaffe/Braunstein was one of the first to experiment with HD for television," reported the industry publication HiDef Magazine: Their landmark series 100 Centre Street ... was one of the first hour dramas to use HDCam as the capture medium.

[35] Martinez and Banks were nominated for a Golden Reel Award (Best Sound Editing in Television Long Form — Music) for the second-season premiere, "Death of a Doxy".

During a party hosting unwed mothers, one of the guests dies suddenly of cyanide poisoning -- leading to controversy and intrigue when Archie, alone of the attendees, insists that she was actually murdered.

During a party hosting unwed mothers, one of the guests dies suddenly of cyanide poisoning -- leading to controversy and intrigue when Archie, alone of the attendees, insists that she was actually murdered.

After being summoned to testify in a murder trial, Wolfe hears testimony that makes him realise the defendant has been framed, leading him and Archie to risk arrest to clear the man's name.

Wolfe's chef Fritz is asked to cook for an elite club of epicures, but when one of the guests is poisoned with arsenic suspicion turns to one of the beautiful serving girls.

As part of a diplomatic negotiation, Wolfe is asked to cook a meal for a recently-arrived foreign ambassador, only for a high-ranking State Department official to be murdered while fishing.

For one, a number of the adaptations are feature-length, and the eye-catching cinematography, set design, and period costuming lean more towards a feature film than a basic cable television series.

These two box sets also included a 22-minute behind-the-scenes film, "The Making of Nero Wolfe," as well as a bonus 16:9 widescreen version[8] of "The Silent Speaker," written and directed by Michael Jaffe.

The Pearson Television International version presents "Prisoner's Base" as a 90-minute film with a single set of titles and credits, and it includes three scenes (3.5 minutes) found on pp.

[115] It is a clone of A&E Home Video's "Complete Classic Whodunit Series", with the shorter North American versions of the episodes, the first-season films split into two parts as broadcast by A&E, and A&E's brief "making of" documentary.

On December 18, 2020, another set in region-free/NTSC format for American and Australian DVD players was issued as "Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe:The Complete Series" by Australia's Via Vision Entertainment.