Your TV GPS, an overview of the coming TV week, appears every Monday morning on BostonGlobe.comToday’s column covers the period from August 19 to 25.
Dashiell Hammett’s private detective Sam Spade has already been adapted for the screen – for example in John Huston’s tough-guy “The Maltese Falcon”. Nobody can top Humphrey Bogart in his iconic portrayal of the soft-hearted tough guy – but isn’t there room for Clive Owen to throw his fedora into the ring? With “Mr. Spade”, In this lavish historical crime drama, which moves from AMC to Netflix on Tuesday, Owen plays a 60-year-old fictional private investigator living in the south of France, far from San Francisco in 1963.
It’s a fun and offbeat six-part TV miniseries that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Owen exudes movie-star charisma, playing the titular detective as melancholy, curious and still sexy after all these years. The elder Spade is still in good enough shape to skinny-dip on camera, and is currently tending a vineyard with a barrel of problems inherited from his intense but short-lived marriage to Chiara Mastroianni’s beautiful and mysterious local.
For noir fans, the classic miniseries (which doesn’t yet have a second season) is a satisfying standalone show. Other series moving from AMC to Max include “Fear the Walking Dead,” “Preacher” and “Anne Rice’s The Mayfair Witches.”
With the Olympics behind us and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago just around the corner, what else can we see this week?
1. “Pachinko” continues the high-quality dramatic adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s 2017 best-seller, which explored four generations of a Korean immigrant family in Japan. The achievement earned the project many accolades and a prestigious 2023 Peabody Award. In its eight-episode second season – set under enemy warplanes in Osaka during World War II and then in Tokyo in 1989 – the panoramic family saga in Korea, Japan and America through war, weddings, funerals, betrayal and assimilation continues on AppleTV+ this Friday.
2. Ed Harris narrates the Netflix original documentary series “Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War.” The spirited miniseries, premiering Wednesday, focuses on another iconic American figure. The show combines historical reenactments and primary research to paint a picture of the larger war the Earps fought with drunken cowboy Ike Clanton and his crew over two opposing visions of how the West should be conquered in post-Civil War America.
3. True Crime is once again examined in more detail with “Face to face with Scott Peterson.” Was convicted murderer and failed husband Scott Peterson just a slimy adulterer? Twenty years after his wife Laci and their unborn child swam ashore in San Francisco Bay, the imprisoned Peterson still maintains his innocence of uxoricide, the murder of women. The three-part documentary series contains the first in-depth interview with the convicted murderer in decades, tracks new developments and coincides with the Los Angeles Innocence Project’s review of Peterson’s sensational case. It premieres on Tuesday on Peacock.
4. Until Thursday, the 2024 Democratic National Convention will stream live on its own YouTube channel. In-depth additional coverage will be available on C-Span, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and PBS. The most important item on the convention agenda: the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz as the party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates. President Biden, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton will also reportedly take to the podium. Harris will take the stage on the fourth night to address her Democratic colleagues and the nation.
5. If you are feeling Olympic withdrawal and enjoyed the US women’s basketball team winning gold in a nail-biting final against France, then head to “WNBA Friday Night Spotlight” on ION TV. The fast-rising league, which includes Olympic athletes Breanna Stewart, Brittney Griner and Sabrina Ionescu – and the Taylor Swift of the three-point shot, WNBA rookie Caitlyn Clark – will broadcast two games on Friday night. The Chicago Sky will take on the Connecticut Sun at 7:30 p.m., followed immediately by the Las Vegas Aces taking on the Minnesota Lynx at 9:30 p.m.
Thelma Adams is a critic and novelist.
