Terry Zobeck chips in a brief notice on episode 2 of Monsieur Spade, currently running on AMC. He did his main layout in his opening installment, and mentions, “There are some gentle spoilers, but I don’t see a way to write much of a review without them. I am presuming that folks are watching along with me each week.”

I’m the one being worked over here, since I’m holding off till the whole thing can be binged in one fell swoop. Terry assures me — and you — “But I won’t give away the solution at the end.”

No whodunits or whydunits or howdunits.

Here’s Terry:

I’ve decided that the way to watch Monsieur Spade is to ignore the whole conceit that this is a Sam Spade story set some 35 years after the events of The Maltese Falcon.

As I noted last week, the makers of this series contorted themselves into a tremendous knot to try and justify the conceit. Let’s say it’s nonsensical and leave it at that.

Once we’ve dispensed with that unnecessary raison d’etre, we find a fairly interesting mystery. The production values are top-notch and the cast, led by Clive Owen (who is no blond Satan) is fine. The scenery and sets are gorgeous — it is southern France after all, so how can they not be?

Spade is confronted with the horrible deaths of six nuns at the convent where he consigned Brigid’s daughter, Teresa, several years previously. Despite Teresa’s hostility toward Sam for the way in which he dealt with her parents, she reluctantly cooperates with him as he begins his unofficial investigation of the murders.

There are some murky clues that suggest the solution may be tied to Sam’s French widow’s first husband, who seems to have been a Nazi collaborator. Her attraction to Sam eight years earlier may have been more than pure romance.

And is Teresa’s father back from the dead and after Sam?

We’ll have to watch episode 3 to see where the story may be headed.

Terry Zobeck, our man on These Mean Streets, volunteered (or was he dragooned? — I forget) to review the new AMC show about Sam Spade in France. He’s decided to take it an episode at a time.

On the other hand I made the call to DVR the whole thing and binge it at the end.

Here’s Terry with a first installment — with episode 2 airing tonight:

Monsieur Spade.

Pardonnez-moi. Mais pourquoi?

Last week the AMC cable network began airing the limited series, Monsieur Spade, starring Clive Owen, which plops San Francisco’s premier PI down in southern France in the early 1960s. Mon Dieu!

The series starts with a prologue. I do wish that folks would follow the great Elmore Leonard’s advice and forget prologues. It’s 1955 and Spade’s been hired from beyond the grave by Brigid O’Shaughnessy to pick up her abandoned 8-year-old daughter, Teresa, in Turkey and deliver her to her grandmother in the small French village of Bozouls.

It seems that a few years after Spade sent Brigid to prison, she contracted a fatal disease, and with Spade’s help, received a compassionate release.

But then — surprise — she wasn’t dying.

In fact, she skips parole and heads to Turkey where according to one of the best bits of dialog in this episode Spade responds to a question as to where the little girl’s mother is: “She went antiquing.”

Presumably, she was still after the Falcon.

Not only did she apparently find it, but she seems to have picked up a husband and a child.

Right.

Anyway, she dies and leaves in her will, along with a sizable trust fund for her daughter, a request that Spade find Teresa and take her to grandmama. How Spade was supposed to have convinced the Turkish authorities to turn over the girl to him or how he could travel through Europe with a young girl of no relation is never explained. Ah well, it was a more innocent time.

Grandmama turns out to be a bitter and angry old woman who wants nothing to do with Teresa. Her son is missing and presumed dead and she never cared for Brigid. She sends Spade packing and, on the road out of town, a tree falls onto his car. An attractive widow comes along and gives the two wanderers a ride.

We then flash forward eight years to 1963 and learn that Spade married the woman and placed the girl in a local convent. Spade’s wife has died and left him a charming French country home where he idles away the days swimming and the nights at a bar he co-owns with an unhappily married woman, whose husband resents his presence.

This set-up covers the first 15 minutes.

The mystery gets moving when there is a rumor that the girl’s father, who Spade apparently had a hand in sending to fight in the Algerian War of Independence some years previously, may have returned from the dead. Teresa dislikes Spade for having sent her mother to prison and her father to his death in North Africa. Seems to be a rational point of view and one that is hard for Spade to argue. And yet she runs to Spade when she discovers multiple gruesome murders.

Monsieur Spade was produced by an international cast and crew and shot on location in southern France. Owen, I suspect, is the only actor known to most non-French viewers. He was superb in The Children of Men.

But here, so far, his performance is so low-key and laconic that its hard to build up any enthusiasm for his portrayal of Spade.

On the talk show circuit to promote the series Owen claims that he is a huge fan of the Bogart film. He studied it and The Big Sleep to capture Bogart’s mannerisms and style. If so, I don’t see any of it on screen, at least in episode 1. Among the other cast, only Denise Ménochet as police chief Patrice Michaud, stands out.

Monsieur Spade may well turn out to be a fine crime thriller, but so far there is nothing that justifies it having Spade as the main character. Other than a couple of references to the original story of the Black Bird, there is simply nothing to justify the Spade angle.

Perhaps Brigid is still alive and will make an appearance to reclaim her daughter, the trust fund, and Spade.

Maybe the murderer is Joel Cairo taking his revenge on Brigid and Sam.

But I doubt it. The sad fact is that Monsieur Spade could as well have been titled Monsieur Marlowe. Or Monsieur Holmes for that matter.

I guess Monsieur Poirot has been taken already.

Brian Wallace keeps the drumbeat going for the January 14 premiere of Monsieur Spade on AMC.

He just popped me a link to an advance review from the AVClub, which digs around a lot on the casting of Clive Owen as “the titular monsieur.” Check it out if inclined.

I believe Terry Zobeck has accepted the challenge of reviewing the six episodes here on These Mean Streets. A little more Hammett-centric, a touch more authoritative for the hard-boiled specialist. Don’t know if Terry will call it as soon as he’s seen the first installment or wait for the run to finish.

In either case, the wait is almost over.

Is the titular monsieur really Sam Spade or are they just calling him Sam Spade for fun?