It’s been an exceptionally good year for TV. From impressive dramas like Shogun and Ripley to Fallout, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and The Sympathizer, the year has been packed to the brim with noteworthy new TV shows deserving of viewers' attention. That's to say nothing, either, of the equally astonishing new seasons of returning series like Industry and Slow Horses that have premiered so far. There have been so many great shows released this year that certain titles have inevitably fallen through the cracks.
Of all of the shows that have flown disappointingly under the radar, though, few have been more deserving of a better reception than Monsieur Spade. Co-created by Queen's Gambit and Godless creator Scott Frank and Oz creator Tom Fontana, the mini-series is a slick, '60s-set noir thriller that serves as a loose sequel to one of the most iconic and beloved films in Hollywood history, 1941's The Maltese Falcon. It premiered earlier this year on AMC and was largely ignored by casual viewers.
Thankfully, like another underrated AMC thriller, it's now streaming on Netflix. That means it's never been easier to finally give one of 2024's best and most underrated shows a chance.
Monsieur Spade is set 20 years after the events of The Maltese Falcon. It finds its eponymous detective, Sam Spade (Clive Owen), living no longer in San Francisco, but rather the South of France. In the series of elliptical moments that open Monsieur Spade's premiere, Sam unwittingly builds the foundation of a new life for himself — one centered around an elegant, alluring French woman, Gabrielle (Chiara Mastroianni), and Teresa (Cara Bossom), the young daughter of Maltese Falcon femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy. In the early '60s, Sam's relatively peaceful, semi-retired existence is upended by a mystery involving, among other things, a convent full of murdered nuns and a mysterious young boy. The case in question proves to be just as windy and, at times, inexplicable as any fan of Sam Spade's creator, author Dashiell Hammett, would hope.
Monsieur Spade winds through its plot at a pace that would make Hammett proud, and which reflects the deceptively unconcerned demeanor of Spade himself. Even when Monsieur Spade arrives at its necessary bursts of blood, the series rarely loses its own sense of cool. It is as concerned with getting you lost in the details of its various mysteries as it is with immersing you in its time period and setting. The series, which was directly entirely by Frank, luxuriates in the calming, muted beauty of the French countryside. It is, at first, jarring to see such a distinctly American figure like Sam Spade relocated to France, but the country’s winding hills, canopies of trees, and old buildings both reinforce the series' overarching sense of paranoia and stand in stark contrast to the hard-boiled, blunt-edged nature of its storytelling.
Indeed, while Monsieur Spade's European setting helps it create its own, distinct identity, the series still moves and sounds like an American crime novel. Its Hammett-inspired roots are particularly apparent in every one of its Frank and Fontana-penned conversations, in which the words that are spoken feel alternately designed to either bounce toward their recipient like tennis balls waiting to be hit back or daggers meant to stop them in their tracks. Owen, sporting a low, whiskey-soaked American accent this time around, relishes each of his lines. The actor isn't, by any means, trying to imitate Humphrey Bogart's take on Spade from The Maltese Falcon, either. His Spade is older than Bogart's, but no less smart or capable. He carries himself like a man who has spent most of his life expecting the worst from the world and everyone in it, and that makes Owen's performance in Monsieur Spade both a fascinating companion to, and extension of, Bogart's turn as the character.
One of the best things you can say about Monsieur Spade is that it doesn't feel like cosplay. At no point throughout its six episodes do you get the sense that it is playing the hits or merely imitating the paperback potboiler works that inspired it. The series is its own original piece of work, but one crafted with the spirit of Hammett and other crime authors like him coursing through its very bones. It is an entertaining, moody, intelligent, and punchy mystery thriller, and it boasts the same slick narrative efficiency that Frank famously brought to his two previous Netflix miniseries, 2017's Godless and 2020's The Queen's Gambit.
It is, of course, a bold choice trying to create a sister series to something like The Maltese Falcon, which holds such a revered place in the history of both American crime literature and Hollywood. It's the kind of gambit that Sam Spade himself wouldn't blink twice at, though, and it's one that Monsieur Spade, fortunately, is capable of pulling off.
