Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 26 March

Monsieur Spade (Frank, 2023)

I haven’t been able to verify this story so please treat it as an unreliable anecdote but it’s a good one nonetheless.

The great British acting knight Ralph Richardson had once trained as a draughtsman and every time he got a new script he would take it to his study and bring out rulers and coloured pencils to mark it up, carefully underlining his dialogue and stage directions, etc.

On certain pages he would write “N.A.R.” in the corner and underline it.

When asked by a young colleague what N.A.R. stood for, Sir Ralph replied, “my dear boy, No Acting Required!” If all he was being asked to do was walk down a corridor, open a door and then step through it, no acting was required and he would preserve his energies for other, more important, scenes.

I thought of that story while I was watching the early episodes of the series Monsieur Spade, which stars Clive Owen as retired detective, Sam Spade (a role made famous by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon).

Owen spends a lot of his time walking across courtyards and around town squares, up flights of stairs and then down them again, getting in and out of cars, that sort of thing, and I imagine him deciding to pace himself through a show where he’s in almost every scene. He’s always been a minimalist sort of actor – I’ve not always been a fan – but this approach turns out to be perfect for a character who goes through life playing his cards very close to his chest.

It’s the early 60s and the former hardboiled San Francisco private eye is now living a quiet life on a vineyard in southern France. He arrived to deliver a small child to the safety of the local convent, fell in love and never left.

The exquisite local village is perched high above a deep gorge which provides the show with its main metaphor. Everyone in Bozouls seems to be harbouring some secret or other:

• The townsfolk, including Chief of Police Michaud (Denis Ménochet), remember how they dealt with Nazi collaborators at the end of World War II;

• Traumatised veteran of the war in Algeria, Jean-Pierre (Stanley Weber), believes that Spade has cheated him out of his rightful inheritance of the vineyard;

• Jean-Pierre’s wife, singer and nightclub owner Peggy (Louise Bourgoin), was once the protegé of an abusive music producer in Paris;

• There’s something a little off about the dotty English mother and son (Rebecca Root and Matthew Beard) who have moved into the cottage next door to the vineyard;

• And not all of the nuns in the convent may have actually taken any vows.

In fact, no one is quite as they seem and – when the nuns are shockingly murdered in some kind of ritualistic fashion at the end of episode one – the webs get increasingly tangled.

Against his will and judgement, Spade is dragged into the case. The young girl he was sent to protect (Cara Bossom) has turned into a wilful teenager as well as being a witness to the murders. Somewhere in the shadows, her psychopathic military assassin father (Jonathan Zaccaï) is pulling strings.

Co-created and directed by Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit), Monsieur Spade is only six episodes – the perfect length – and structured to satisfy. A cliffhanger at the end of each episode, a flashback at the beginning, and plenty of twists, turns and double-crossing in-between.

The production design is exceptional. Every room is full of vintage nicknacks to provide lived-in details, especially gramophones and radios which are given loving close-ups to go with the French pop of the era on the soundtrack.

And the cars, my word, the cars. So many beautiful vintage European automobiles, including a stunning 1930s aubergine Rolls-Royce which is another thing that Spade inherited along with the big house and the swimming pool.

Does this Spade live up to Dashiel Hammett’ s original vision? Owen certainly looks like he’s been in a scrap or two and has a wisecrack for every occasion, even if he doesn’t have the energy to always maintain the accent. It’s a summer noir – Owen’s collar is always open as a concession to the heat – but occasionally we see that he has the raincoat and famous fedora still in his wardrobe, like Batman’s cape.

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Where to watch Monsieur Spade