An Unrecognizable Spenser?

Page 45 of Ace Atkins’ 2019 Spenser novel, Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes, features a brief exchange between the veteran Boston private eye and a film producer in Hollywood. After inquiring whether Spenser has come all the way out to Los Angeles in hopes of peddling his life story to television, the producer suggests that changing “a few details” in Spenser’s biography might help sell the idea.

“Like what?” asks the P.I.

“You’re too much of an old-fashioned good guy,” says the producer. “White knight and all that crap. I’d make the hero fresh out of prison.” That minor alteration, he suggests, might give the character some valuable “mystery and edge.”

One presumes that by the time Atkins wrote those lines, he was well aware of what the screenwriters behind Netflix’s forthcoming film, Spenser Confidential, had in mind for his protagonist. As The Hollywood Reporter explains, this teleflick—set to debut on March 6, and starring Mark Wahlberg as the mono-monikered Spenser—“follows ex-cop Spenser …, who, after being let out of prison, gets roped into helping his old boxing coach and mentor, Henry (Alan Arkin), with promising amateur Hawk (Winston Duke). When two of Spenser’s former colleagues are murdered, he recruits Hawk and his ex-girlfriend, Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), to help him investigate and bring the culprits to justice.”

Wahlberg claimed, during a recent interview with Ellen Lee DeGeneres, that this Netflix project is “based on one of my favorite TV series as a kid, Spenser: For Hire.” However, a trailer for Spenser Confidential bears little, if any, resemblance to that 1985-1988 ABC crime drama starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks. Nor does it seem to have much in common with Atkins’ 2013 novel, Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, which marked the return to print of Parker’s best-known character (after the author’s death in 2020), and from which Spenser Confidential was reportedly adapted. Instead, Wahlberg and fellow producer Neal H. Moritz (one of the people behind the Fast & Furious movie franchise) have filled Spenser Confidential with video-game-paced violence and other shallow distractions, and have turned Spenser and Hawk into the stars of yet another throwaway “buddy picture,” not unlike the rebooted Hawaii Five-O.

Wahlberg says that with so many Spenser novels from which to draw material (48 so far), “we’re hopefully doing a couple more” movie adaptations. Maybe so, but don’t count on me watching. As a longtime fan of the books, I prefer my Spenser with more charm, compassion, and sly wit, and less “mystery and edge.”

“For Hire” Soon For Sale

Although the first four (of seven) television movies inspired by Robert B. Parker’s novels about Boston private eye Spenser have been available in DVD format for some time now, the 1985-1988 ABC-TV series, Spenser: For Hire, starring Robert Urich and Avery Brooks, has been gathering dust, waiting for its own release. But it appears that wait is finally coming to an end.

TV Shows on DVD reports that Warner Archive Collection recently offered a novel spin on the widely publicized ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in order to announce the coming debut of Spenser: For Hire--The Complete First Season (22 episodes). “The title isn’t up for pre-order yet, so we don’t have a date or a cost for you right now,” the site explains. However, the cover art can be seen in a video here.

UPDATE: There’s now a link to Spenser: For Hire--The Complete First Season on the Warner Archive site. The set is priced at $39.95.

A Flightless Wonder

Let’s see a show of hands: How many of you remember the 1989 Spenser: For Hire spin-off series, A Man Called Hawk? OK, you two meatheads in the back can lower your arms now. And the rest of you ... well, don’t feel too awful for your ignorance. The program imagined Spenser’s kick-ass sidekick, Hawk (played with such power and grace by Avery Brooks), transferring from Boston to his hometown of Washington, D.C., where he inevitably became a champion for people who needed one. It was a pretty thin concept, and bled Hawk of the ominous authority he’d been given by Spenser creator Robert B. Parker. To just about nobody’s surprise, A Man Called Hawk lasted on ABC-TV for only 13 episodes.

I’d pretty much forgotten about A Man Called Hawk until this week, when Lee Goldberg posted that series’ main title sequence in his blog, A Writer’s Life. It’s certainly an uninspiring opening for what I remember as a disappointing show that utterly wasted the talents of a superior performer. Brooks was better showcased in his next gig, as Commander Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.