The anti-heroes of crime novels also retire in Provence.

Humphrey Bogart turned Sam Spade, the anti-hero created by Dashiell Hammett in The Maltese Falcon, who would become the prototype, along with Philip Marlowe, of the protagonist of the noir novel and film. A brilliant detective, with his own morals and sufficiently skeptical to hand over the woman he's attracted to to the police. But what becomes of Spade in adulthood? This is what two great names in television creation, Scott Frank (Queen's Gambit) and Tom Fontana (Oz) in the series Mr. Spade, in which Clive Owen takes Bogart's testimony as a now-retired detective in France, in the idyllic and invented village of Bozouls, where he is staying in a beautiful estate left to him by his wife. A privileged retirement is turned upside down when six nuns from a nearby convent are murdered and he feels the obligation to protect the teenage girl they were taking in, Teresa (Cara Bossom), the reason that brought him to Europe.

Thus begins a mystery with multiple ramifications involving an Algerian boy with powers, qualms and traumas left over from the Nazi occupation and the Algerian War of Independence, the secret services of different countries, love stories, betrayals and various infidelities, and a man who everyone...

The nihilism of the crime novel largely sprang from the disenchantment after the First World War. Set in the 1960s, Mr. Spade brings to light the open wounds of World War II and the Algerian War of Independence, encapsulated in a small town that reflects the France traumatized by these conflicts. This allows the creators to give a collective feeling to the disenchantment that in American crime novels is personified individually. This atmosphere, grounded in historical reasons, is the most powerful aspect of this retelling of Hammett's character. Owen also lends his convincing presence and cavernous vision to Spade's mature vision. At one point, he even appears to us undergoing a rectal exam during a prostate exam. A demystifying note that, however, doesn't go any further. The veteran Spade maintains the appeal, personal ethics, and cynical edge of his younger days, although he seems to have found a certain peace in the pool of the splendid mansion left to him by his French wife, whom he remembers with longing.

The Gentrified Vision

Something is off about this gentrified vision of the anti-hero of black. Granted, underworld detectives are also entitled to a sunny retirement. But the context of Mr. Spade is dangerously close to a police variant of Under the Tuscan sun either A good year. It doesn't help that the plot becomes entangled in a very complicated way. Often, in crime fiction, the plots end up being quite confusing. This demonstrates that solving enigmas was the least of the authors' interests, who prioritized the creation of unforgettable characters and suffocating atmospheres. But in Mr. Spade The creators fail to balance the elements. There are too many characters and they're given too little room to breathe, and the historical drama doesn't quite permeate the tone of the series as it should. In the end, they even resort to a character they pulled out of thin air to tell us everything we missed, so Mr. Spade moves further away from the neo-noir to get closer to the whodunit in a picturesque style context Knives in the back.