Sam Spade as ‘Monsieur Spade’

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Humphrey Bogart’s memorable portrayal of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941) wasn’t the fictional detective’s first appearance on screen, but it would be one of his last. Author Dashiell Hammett’s gumshoe had a literary rival in Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and Marlowe has been filmed more often than Spade. That tally might change with the arrival of the series “Monsieur Spade,” streaming on AMC+.

“Monsieur Spade” might actually be the first television series dedicated to the detective, and it brings him to places Hammett never imagined. The story unfolds in the 1950s and early ‘60s, not in Spade’s usual haunt, the streets of San Francisco, but in Bozouls, a small town in southern France. He arrives in 1955 to do a job—deliver a young girl, Teresa, to her father, Phillippe. But Phillippe can be found nowhere and Teresa’s grand mama, Audrey, refuses to accept the girl. The local police prefect tells Spade to move on. But a fortuitous accident on the way out of town leads Spade to marriage with a wealthy widow. He came knowing barely a word of French and within a few years has gone almost native.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Scott Frank (who also directs) and Emmy-winning screenwriter Tom Fontana maintain a terse film noir pace in a screenplay that gets to the point—even as the point grows more and more obscure. Spade drives into Bozouls in a steel-bodied sedan, wearing a slouch hat and a raincoat over his rumpled suit and tie. He sips from a whiskey flask. Jump to 1961, the setting for the bulk of the story, and he’s local gentry with a spiffy Euro car, a taste for wine and fluent in French (albeit his housekeeper quips, “I’ve heard crows with better accents”). The time shifts between 1955 and 1961 are abrupt, but one gets used to them.

Humor colors the threads of “Monsieur Spade’s” increasingly knotted plot lines, as when his pipe smoking doctor counsels him to quit smoking. Diagnosed with emphysema, Spade coughs and though he moves a bit stiffly, he hasn’t lost strength or agility with age. He can still tear a gun from an assailant’s hands or pin a much younger man face down on a tabletop. And he’ll need his wits as well to sort through the crime scenes that envelope him. 

British actor Clive Owen (Oscar nominated for his role in Closer) plays Spade as wary but willing, with eyes that have seen too much in the past to complain about disappointments in the present. “I keep my promises, particularly when I’m paid to,” he tells the police prefect. But his cynicism is worn like bulletproof vest protecting a decent heart. Like Liam Neeson in the title role of last year’s film Marlowe, “Monsieur Spade” shows that the private investigators of crime fiction’s golden age retain their hold on our attention when given an actor who understands their weary worldview.