NBC purchased the television rights to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories for a proposed series that would have starred Orson Welles as Wolfe. Unfortunately, Welles and the network could not come to terms (NBC wanted a weekly series; Welles wanted to do a series of 90 minute movies to be filmed at his home). Ultimately, NBC launched this one-hour "Nero Wolfe" series with William Conrad in the title role.
The sets for Wolfe's brownstone residence were quite true to the descriptions in Rex Stout's novels with one notable exception. In the novels Wolfe's office was furnished with a single red leather visitor's chair before Wolfe's desk, among several other chairs. Occupancy of the red leather chair was often a point of contention among visitors. In this series, there are two red fabric covered chairs facing Wolfe's desk.
Conrad was terrible at memorizing lines so they let him use cue cards.
Viacom, the longtime distributor of William Conrad's earlier series "Cannon" and the production company behind his later series "Jake and the Fatman", would acquire "Nero Wolfe"'s production company Paramount in 1994, resulting in the latter becoming the distributor of the other two shows beginning in 1995.