Earlier this summer, Netflix added some of AMC’s most popular TV shows, including Fear the Walking Dead and Preacher, to its streaming library. We have highlighted some of those shows over the past few months, like The Terror, but there’s an addition we missed that deserves your attention — the neo-noir miniseries Monsieur Spade, starring Clive Owen.
Created by Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit) and Tom Fontana (Oz), Monsieur Spade features Clive Owen as private detective Sam Spade, a character introduced in Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. The show picks up decades after the events of the novel, and Spade has moved to the South of France to enjoy his retirement.
His retirement is suddenly interrupted when six nuns are brutally slaughtered at a local convent. The murders are seemingly connected to a child with unnatural powers, and wouldn’t you know, Spade has no choice but to solve the mystery.
At just six episodes in length, this is the kind of series you can easily binge-watch in a weekend. According to reviews, it’s not always action-packed, but fans of a slow burn should have a blast. In a review for The Wall Street Journal, John Anderson writes that “Mr. Owen manages to keep things on track, despite the series’ frisky attitude toward time itself.”
“The stories just don’t come together frequently enough in Monsieur Spade, but with gorgeous scenery, crackling dialogue and Owen’s best TV role in years, there’s still enough to give this venerable character some new life,” adds THR’s Daniel Fienberg in his review.
It’s also worth pointing out that this is the first TV show that Scott Frank has written and directed since The Queen’s Gambit, which remains one of Netflix’s best original series. Frank also wrote and directed Netflix’s tragically underrated Western drama Godless.
