Hello everyone
Last month I was thinking about location—not the picturesque backdrop kind, but location as a system of pressures that bear down on characters and force them to act in particular ways. This month, I want to follow that thread to a small village in the south of France in 1963, where Sam Spade has retired, inherited a vineyard, and is about to be dragged back into trouble.
This transformation happens in Monsieur Spade which recently became available to stream in the UK on Channel 4 and U. The series has been available elsewhere around the globe for a while, but the distribution has been patchy, so you might have to dig to find it.
Before we get to France, it’s worth spending a moment with the original because we can’t really talk about what Monsieur Spade is attempting without understanding what it’s following.
The Blueprint
Sam Spade only appears in one full-length novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon, published in 1930. That single novel did something remarkable—it solidified the template for the hard-boiled private detective. Every cynical, raincoat-wearing, morally complex investigator who has come after Spade is, in one way or another, built from his mould.
The Maltese Falcon has been adapted for the screen several times—the classic adaption is the 1941 version where Humphrey Bogart plays Sam Spade. Again, this is the landmark by which all private detectives are judged (and against which all noir movies are rated).
What makes Spade interesting isn’t that he’s a good man. That’s questionable: he’s having an affair with his partner’s wife, not to mention he has a pragmatic relationship with the truth and is happy to lie when it suits him.
But he has a code—an unwavering set of principles that he won’t compromise. When his (cuckolded) partner Miles Archer is killed, Spade turns in the woman responsible for Archer’s death, and even though Spade may have feelings for her, he explains it simply in the film adaptation:
When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.
A Man in Mourning
Monsieur Spade finds Sam Spade moved from his native San Francisco to Bozouls, a village in southern France.
The series uses a (slightly clunky) dual timeline. We see Spade arriving in 1955 to deliver Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s daughter to her father—O’Shaughnessy was the “femme fatale” Spade turned over to the police at the end of The Maltese Falcon.
The main action then picks up eight years later in 1963. In those intervening years, Spade has married, been widowed, and effectively retired.
Clive Owen carries the role of Spade well. He can deliver a dry one-liner with the right amount of exhaustion behind it, and he has the physical stillness that the older Spade requires. There are moments—an English inflection in the French dialogue, an accent that wanders—but these are minor complaints.
The more interesting shift is emotional.
The younger Spade, is a man of appetites: for women, for money, for the game. The older Spade is a man in mourning. He found his wife and lost her. And his grief—the mourning which will affect him for the rest of his life—is the bigger change that influences Spade far more than the shift in location.
The Problem of the Vineyard
But there’s another change in the older Spade. In The Maltese Falcon, Spade takes the case for reasons he’s quite upfront about:
We didn’t exactly believe your story, Miss Wonderly. We believed your 200 dollars. I mean, you paid us more than if you had been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it all right.
In San Francisco, Spade is a working detective. The financial incentive is the imperative that shapes every decision—it determines which cases he takes, which clients he tolerates, and how long he stays involved. Remove that imperative, and you remove one of the most powerful engines driving the character forward.
By 1963, Spade owns a vineyard. He has (inherited) money. The case, when it comes, must matter to Spade so that he gets involved for reasons beyond money. The series tries to thread this needle—there are personal connections, innocents in danger, old loyalties—and these are legitimate reasons to get involved. But they don’t quite have the same necessity. Spade’s code is still intact; the urgency, is not.
Bluntly, the Spade character in 1963 is wholly believable, but I’m not convinced this is the Spade we want to see.
Following the Original
There’s also the broader question of how to follow a piece of work that has become, over nearly a century, effectively definitive. I’m not sure there’s a comfortable answer here. The 1941 film is taut, spare, and studio-shot—one hundred minutes, one clear storyline, everything stripped to what matters. Monsieur Spade is a six-episode series, sumptuously filmed in the French countryside, with more characters, more subplots, and considerably more breathing room.
In some ways, it’s a different enough thing that direct comparison feels unfair. The cinematography is genuinely beautiful—the kind of pastoral France that makes you understand why Spade stayed and has you heading to check the price of flights to France and make sure your passport is still in date. And the first five episodes have enough in them to hold the attention.
It’s the final episode where things slip. The central McGuffin—the device that’s supposed to hold the story together; the role performed by the Maltese Falcon statue of the original—doesn’t quite earn the weight the series places on it. Without wanting to give too much away, the denouement feels like a poor imitation of an Agatha Christie. For this to be a Sam Spade story, more is needed.
Disappointment
I don’t want to be too hard on Monsieur Spade. It’s a serious, ambitious attempt to do something genuinely difficult: take a character who has been frozen in amber for decades and let him age into a different world. The France of 1963—still carrying the weight of World War II and the Algerian conflict casting its shadow—is a thoughtful choice of destination, and the series is clearly made with care.
But the series is caught in a bind of its own making. It invokes the Spade legacy deliberately, asks us to bring all of that history with us, and then has to live up to it. If it were simply a story about a retired American in rural France, the ending might feel more elegant. Because it’s a Sam Spade story, the bar is different.
There are many reasons to watch Monsieur Spade—to see Spade again, for stunning countryside, and at the start, for the story. But ultimately, if you’re looking for a second Maltese Falcon, you’re likely going to be disappointed.
Until July
That’s me for this month. I’ll be back in July.
Until then.
All the best
Simon