‘Monsieur Spade’ Makes Clive Owen a Classic Noir Hero in the Best Kind of Fanfiction: TV Review
variety.comAlison Herman TV Critic All works of IP exploitation are, on some level, legitimized fanfiction. Once divorced from the original author, the line that separates a franchise’s sequel, prequel or reboot from the average post on Wattpad is a great deal of money and the blessing of an estate and/or corporation.
But even with this baseline, the AMC limited series “Monsieur Spade” is an especially unabashed act of wish fulfillment through and for a beloved protagonist.
The namesake of “Monsieur Spade” is none other than Sam Spade (Clive Owen), the private investigator who headlined the Dashiell Hammett novel turned John Huston film noir “The Maltese Falcon,” plus a handful of Hammett short stories published in the 1930s.
For their spin on Spade, series creators Tom Fontana (“Oz”) and Scott Frank (“The Queen’s Gambit”) send the sleuth to the south of France, where he spends a few weeks of his not-so-peaceful retirement looking into a massacre at a local convent.
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