• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 11, 2024

On its face, transplanting tough guy detective Sam Spade from the fog-bound streets and alleyways of 1940s San Francisco to the sunny French countryside of the ’60s would seem to be a near-impossible task.

But in the new revival of the Spade character, “Monsieur Spade” on AMC (and AMC+ and Acorn TV), the writers kept it simple. 

Very broadly speaking, having been sent to France in 1955 on a U.S.-based assignment, Spade found that he liked it there. He also married a woman he met there and decided to stay.

In Episode One of “Monsieur Spade,” premiering Sunday, nothing is revealed of what kind of a life Spade might have left behind in San Francisco other than his private-investigations business, trench coat and fedora.

When “Monsieur Spade” opens in 1955, Spade -- played by Clive Owen (photo above) -- is still wearing both and picking his way through the French countryside like a man who just accidentally parachuted onto Mars.

But after this brief bit of exposition, the action in the series moves ahead eight years to 1963, the time frame in which the show principally takes place.

By then, Spade is about three-quarters fluent in French, and the hat and coat are long gone.

Sam Spade first appeared in Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel “The Maltese Falcon,” but the 1941 movie starring Humphrey Bogart as Spade elevated the character to the top ranks in the canon of American detective fiction.

Like the Bogart Spade, the new version is a quintessential hero in the film noir tradition -- cynical, flawed, hardened by experience and living unapologetically by the code of the white knight.

The Bogart Spade lived by the same code when he dedicated himself to finding the killer of his detective partner, Miles Archer, a man Spade didn’t even like.

In the end, he felt so strongly about his responsibility to Archer that he “sent over” the woman he thought he loved to take the rap for the murder and possibly be executed for it.

The name of the woman, Brigid O’Shaughnessy (played by Mary Astor in the movie), is invoked at the beginning of “Monsieur Spade” and forms the only link in the show between the 1963 Spade and his predecessor.

Spade’s mission in France was to find the family of the orphaned daughter of O’Shaughnessy, who was paroled from prison after she contracted an illness there. She died of the illness several years later after fleeing to France.

In his search for the girl’s origins, Spade applies the same steadfastness with which he first became famous in 1941.

But that assignment is only the beginning. By the time Episode One is over, Spade will stumble upon the aftermath of a crime that will take his powers of investigation to a whole other level.

“Monsieur Spade” was co-created by executive producer Tom Fontana, who is known for some of TV’s most memorable shows, among them “Homicide Life On the Streets” on NBC, and the prison drama “Oz” on HBO.

His co-creator was Scott Frank, best-known as a writer and director on “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix. Barry Levinson is listed as an executive producer of “Monsieur Spade.”

“Monsieur Spade” has all the earmarks of another great show for AMC Networks. 

“Monsieur Spade” premieres Sunday, January 14, on AMC, AMC+ and Acorn TV.