Monsieur Spade

Monsieur Spade started off intriguing, with complex characters and an air of mystery befitting a Neo-noir detective drama. Clive Owen brought a gritty gravitas to the iconic role of Sam Spade, while the show explored his retirement in 1960s France with promising plot twists. However, it ultimately rushed the conclusion in a disappointing final episode full of tedious exposition dumping. The show failed to stick the landing after a strong setup, leaving an unsatisfying payoff for both the overarching mystery around a mysterious child as well as Spade's personal character arc. While the performances remained compelling throughout, the writing let down both the talented cast and the audience by the end.

Rating: 5.75 out of 10.

The show has some great things going for it - beautiful setting and cinematography, great rendition of an older Sam Spade by Clive Owen, some interesting supporting characters (and their respective actors). Most importantly it has a achieved a great mix between its Southern France atmosphere and its noir story roots.

What isn't so good is the convoluted plot - new agents and sides are introduced constantly, throughout all the episodes. I guess as a way to add more mystery rather than create it with a more tight and better written plot. To the point where it leads to quite unsatisfactory ending where too many sides rush to battle it in the smallest of places in an already too small for them French village. It's already ridiculous, and even another sloppy deus ex machina is needed for the story to reach some conclusion.

I still give it a 7/10 rating, because its premise and main characters were satisfying and still carry greater potential for further seasons. But only with better writing than this, because current season is enjoyable only if you turn a blind eye for all the unnecessary plot convolutions, and enjoy the good parts instead.

It's 1955 rural France. Sam Spade (Clive Owen) is searching for Philippe Saint Andre, the father of his charge, a girl named Teresa. He's been hired by Teresa's late mother who is his former lover and had stolen a large sum of money. He faces many obstacles with the disappeared Philippe. He places Teresa with the nuns at a local orphanage. It's 8 years later and Teresa is turning 18. She is set to receive the large sum from a trust and her thieving father is rumored to have returned. One night, Sam finds the girls locked in their room, Teresa missing, and the nuns brutally murdered.

The story is a bit of a mess. It starts great but ends muddled. I don't like the McGuffin boy. He is really just an object rather than a living breathing character. The girl is a much better subject. It is almost a comedy when they get to the final sit-down and calling out all the characters. I really like Clive Owen doing his Sam Spade. It's impossible to get away from Bogie but this is a fun interpretation. Stay for Clive.

A show that had a lot of potential, even got off to a solid start, but the ending is hilariously bad.

At the beginning, we follow the elderly Sam Spade who has retired in France in a small rural town. Through a series of flashbacks, we find out how it happened.

The characters are generally not bad, but as the plot progressed, the writers couldn't resist without inserting modern clichés that are getting on everyone's nerves a little bit and starting to cause a complete counter effect.

One of the main villains, supposedly a monk who may or may not be, is hilarious. Ok, you don't like church, we get it, we see it in almost every new movie or series anyway, and it's already getting boring. When you see someone from the church on film, it is immediately clear that this person is almost certainly a villain. It's all become hilariously predictable.

The series had an excellent potential to give us a touch of good old entertainment and a good crime story with a bit of spy intrigue. Instead, we got another sermon, and this is especially evident in the last episode.

Speaking of the last episode, it's also the worst episode of the series, and it should be the exact opposite. The dialogues are terrible, and the sequence of events is catastrophically bad, and the direction is confusing, in some parts you can't see anything, and the action is hilarious. Yes, the action is completely unconvincing and laughable.

The addition of new characters at the last minute, who are there only to serve the scriptwriters to complete the plot and to satisfy the wishes of the producers, ruined the overall impression of the series even more. Not to mention how hilariously unrealistic it was. The resolution of everything in the end comes as a comedic effect because that's exactly what it is, a comedy.

The conversations between the characters at the end are so hilarious that they create the impression of a parody.

It's a pity, the show had potential, and it started solidly, the actors are not bad at all, but the script was worse from episode to episode, and the same with the direction. In the last episode, the main character, Samuel Spade, was reduced to a secondary character.

The last episode is so bad, that it completely destroyed the little that was good.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a complete waste of time.

Just before watching this miniseries about a middle-aged Sam Spade living in France, I read an article about it's co-writer/creator/director Scott Frank and his success as a script doctor who could find a script's weaknesses and set them write. Unfortunately, Monsieur Spade needed Scott Frank the script doctor rather than Scott Frank the writer.

In Monsieur Spade, a middle-aged Sam Spade lives in France and stuff happens. But very little of it happens in episode one, which could be described as a slow boil, but is probably more accurately a low simmer with the heat turned up in the last 5 minutes. It's really rather dull, and takes its time for no good reason.

But then things pick up. A lot starts happening, people die, people threaten, Spade investigates and wisecracks, and it's all pretty good. True, there are odd bits, like the character of Jean-Pierre, who ultimately serves no purpose in the plot and isn't interesting in his own right. But for the most part it's entertaining.

And then in the final episode it goes totally off the rails in double-crosses and murders and schemes that don't make much sense, and then there's this endless discussion that more-or-less explains what happened in the most awkward and tedious way possible, and none of it holds together or offers any narrative satisfaction, and there are so many loose ends.

Come on, Scott Frank, the New Yorker painted you as having unerring instincts. WHERE DID THOSE INSTINCTS GO?

Overall, I actually did enjoy this. I like Clive Owen's Spade, even if he's no Bogie, and I liked the repartee, even if there's nothing nearly as memorable as almost every line of Maltese Falcon. The acting of the supporting cast is excellent, and the story does keep you interested before it falls apart.

Is it worth watching? Maybe. Just be forewarned.