It doesn't seem to take place in the 50s, my professor today said it does, but that's not how it seemed regarding the jazz (early big band sort of stuff), the dress, etc. Does it take place in the 40s or 20s or something?
*He can't see he's got flies in his eyes 'cause he's got flies in his eyes.*
The original stories ran from the mid 1930's through the 1970's, and there are references to contemporary events, such as World War 2, in some of them. In the series, however, it looks like the producers "normalized" all of the settings so they took place in the 1950's. It probably made the budget easier to manage, but creates some interesting anomalies, such as the history of Wolfe and his adopted daughter in "Over my Dead Body", which ran at the end of Season 1. The novel was published in 1939, so the chronology and history of Yugoslavia and Montenegro fits with her purported age going back from there to World War One, but are complete nonsense if you look back from the mid 1950's.
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the cars are always a tip-off, very astute observation.
in one book, nero claims to have born in the usa, in others, he was born abroad and naturalized here. (the black mountain)
the point here is that mr. stout never pretended to make the wolfe saga a coherent saga. read the books again; in some, there is a washroom in the downstairs office, in other books, it is omitted or definately not there. mr. stout took the nero series on a story by story basis, without worrying about technical details, and so should we.
these are fine stories, don't you agree??
One quality I have always liked about these books is the timeless quality to it.
The stories go from the mid 30's to the mid 70's. The technology, governments, world, etc change. But Wolfe, Archie, the Sal and gang, and Kramer are consistent, decade after decade. Sort of frozen in time. And it works. Especially with a man like Wolfe at the heart of it, who almost seems to stubborn to age, let alone change.
So that is how I see the show. In one ep Goodwin is in uniform and communicating with the Army. Another time they are dealing with postwar immigrants. Another time their are "beatniks". Then another a clearly sixties setting.
The show covers a wide area of time, but it is not chronologically done. The cars, and other little things can clue you in to the period.
I'm so glad they jump around in time but have the characters stay stable....I much prefer the 40s and 50s though....the fashions and cars were more to my personal liking, plus Tim Hutton looks spiffy in a Fedora.
sharein one book, nero claims to have born in the usa, in others, he was born abroad and naturalized here. (the black mountain)
Vincent D'Onofrio plays Detective Robert Goren as the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes complete with a partner who is just there to ask the obvious questions. So you make a good point.
shareThe book where Wolfe says he is from The US is Over My Dead Body, this was apparently because, as Stout says; "In the original draft of Over My Dead Body Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from The American Magazine, supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."
So Wolfe is actually from Montenegro, as every other book supports. There is actually a quite rigorous coherency throughout all the books.
The episodes were not in chronological order. That episode that you refer was death of a doxy, it was full of bright 60s fashion, beat poetry etc. That was the season 2 premiere, but the next episode was back in the 40's. The episodes were set whenever the original novel was set.
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of course, that the reference from the show...not having read the books judging from other posts the time period could be anywhere from the 30 to 50.
Btrjr, you should read the reply written by Khall3, the first reply to the thread. He (or she) correctly states that the books were written and published from the 30's through the 70's, and each story was contemporary for it's time. He is also correct that they did decide to "normalize" (his term) the series to the 1950's, however I am pretty sure this was done more for convenience than to try to actually force-fit all of the stories into that time frame. Indeed, it seems that they tried to keep the stories as authentic to the original novels and novellas as possible and I have a feeling that if it had come down to a clash between maintaining the unspoken "rule" of the 50's vs keeping the stories as authentic as possible. authenticity would have won out.
To fully understand my point here, I guess maybe you need to know that Stout did something that IMO, was genius: there was no conceivable realistic way that Wolfe, Archie, or any of the other characters could have been their ages at the start of the first novel and still been true to what they were supposed to be to the last novel, so Stout just conveniently ignored the entire aging issue for most of the recurring characters. The brilliant part, isn't just that he didn't age the characters, its also the fact that he didn't even try to explain it, since of course, no explanation would have made any sense anyway.
So the reader is more or less just expected to have a certain suspension of disbelief when it comes to age, and in a smaller way, the passage of time. Therefore, the only reasonable thing to do is to not make any attempt to "place" the series in time. Just ignore it and enjoy it for what it is, because that's really the only sensible thing one really can do about it.
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I went to look at your website and my first reaction was "holy Crap, it's going to take me forever to really go through some of this, both because you have so many thing and because my own stuff is (and has been for some time, due to storage reasons) highly disorganized. But I will peruse your site when I have more time and see if there is anything I need - just know that it's going to be probably some time until I can really do it. And yeah, I am amazed.
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I think it's possible that it is all accurate (or authentic to the books on some level) and not 'non csnon' or whatever the term should be.
The answer is fairly simple - some episodes are set toward the start of a plausible timespan (of perhaps somewhere in the late 30s thru to the late 50s) of the totality of the nero wolfe stories in general, some toward the middle, and some toward the end. The stories simply aren't screened, or for that matter filmed, in a chronological order.
Keep in mind that real people wear clothing, listen to music and drive cars that are 10 years old. Nowadays the poodle skirt is more of costume used to indicate a time period rather than a typical outfit from the 50s.
shareI've just watched the complete series via DVDs from Netflix and as far as I can tell, the year in which each story was written is the year in which the show is set. Kind of makes sense, no?
shareActually, they did update a few of the stories that were set in the 30 and 40's to the 50's probably for budgetary reasons. They did,however move "Death of a Doxy" to the early 60's because the plot required it.
I'll Teach You To Laugh At Something's That's Funny
Homer Simpson
Exactly, amacrae. When you see them all AND have read the books, it becomes obvious. This was a strange and wonderful series, and this just added to that in a good way.
shareSeveral other posters have already made some very sensible remarks, bu I'd like to add the impression that I had before I read this thread. We already watched the entire series, but that was several years ago. We're currently reading all the books in chronological order, and watching an episode immediately after finishing the book it's based on. So far we've watched "Over my Dead Body," "Help Wanted: Male," "The Silent Speaker," and "Before I Die," all based on stories and novels set in the mid-40s.
The first time there was a major street scene, it startled me that practically ALL of the cars were from the mid-50s (the tail-fin era). As someone has already commented, real people often drive cars that aren't fresh off the showroom floor, so the scene was unrealistic regardless of when it was supposed to be set. I assume that very few cars were made during the steel shortages of WWII and its aftermath, so it's a whole lot easier (and therefore cheaper) to find cars from the mid-50s than from any earlier era, and perhaps more importantly, those cars don't resemble anything that's been made since the early 60s, so they immediately LOOK retro. The decision-makers probably assume that very few members of the audience will realize exactly when the cars were made anyhow -- they'll just see them as vintage cars.
The music is swing, but that was popular from the 30s through the 60s (note that the American Bandstand theme music is swing, not rock-n-roll), so it doesn't really date the episodes either.
Maybe they were going for sort of a generic retro effect?