Thu 30 May 2019
A Made for TV PI Movie Review: SPENSER: PALE KINGS AND PRINCES (1994).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[5] Comments
SPENSER: PALE KINGS AND PRINCES. Made for TV movie. Lifetime, 02 January 1994. Robert Urich (Spenser), Barbara Williams (Susan Silverman), Avery Brooks (Hawk), Sonja Smits, Ken James, Maurice Dean Wint, Alex Carter. Screenplay: Robert B. Parker and
Joan H. Parker, based on the former’s book of the same title. Director: Vic Sarin.
The plot is a little thin in this one, but if you like the Spenser books, as I do in general, but as I know some of you don’t, this is about as close to one of the stories that a filmed version is going to get. I say that not because I’ve read the book as well as seen the movie. The truth is, I read the book so long ago I’m simply not able to compare the two.
No, the reason for saying this is that Robert B. Parker and his wife Joan are the screenwriters, and she was one of several co-producers. If that doesn’t give you some sort of say in how a movie comes out, it’s difficult to say what does.
One difference that I seem to remember from the book is that when Spenser makes a trip into the mid-central section of Massachusetts — a small hamlet named Wheaton, which probably doesn’t really exist — to look into the death of a investigate reporter who was killed there, in the movie Susan comes with him. In the book, she only commutes back and forth between Wheaton ad Boston. In the the movie, her motivation for staying close on the scene is that the reporter was one of her clients in psychotherapy.
What this change does, though, is allow the two of them to work on the investigation together while staying in the same small motel room and eating together in the same dingy diner. This gives the a lot more time to indulge in witty banter together, and to give Susan the opportunity to see her man in action, up close and personal.
And what action means to Spenser, of course, is barging right in, asking questions, and making a general nuisance of himself — and no small number of enemies, a term that applies to the local police force as well as possible local drug lords. Wheaton has a population that has been substantially bolstered in recent years by a influx of refugee Colombians, and when they have been unable to find work, they have turned to dope peddling, or so it has been rumored. This may be the reason behind the reporter’s death — or it may be his non-stop womanizing ways — or perhaps an even more deadly combo of the two.
Hawk shows up to help the two of them out when things get a little too tight for them on their own. I can’t think of a better actor to play the part than Avery Brooks, but Robert Urich and Barbara Williams have quite a bit of chemistry together as well. I enjoyed this one.
May 31st, 2019 at 10:59 pm
In general a faithful TV movie, at least as much as television could be to a novel from this era. The leads were attractive and represented Parker’s characters well if they never quite became Spenser, Susan, and Hawk.
I do think television brought out some of the weaknesses of the books without Parker’s voice to carry you past any rough spots.
May 31st, 2019 at 11:40 pm
If I remember correctly, Parker himself wasn’t all that happy with Robert Urich as Spenser, but Urich had a great onscreen personality that people watching at home were really comfortable with. I’ve not seen any of the later three movies with Joe Mantegnaas Spenser, but I wouldn’t have picked him myself in a million years. I don’t have a firm picture of Susan Silverman in my mind, but I liked Barbara Williams’ performance in this one.
When I read the books now, which isn’t that often, even though I’ve read only about half of them, I see Avery Brooks as Hawk, and no one else, but I’d be the first to admit the he’s only a one note character.
I read one of the Spenser books that Ace Atkins rote. It was OK, or even better than OK, but when I was done, I asked myself, if I want to read Spenser books, why not read the real ones, the ones Parker himself wrote, especially when I haven’t even read them all yet.
June 1st, 2019 at 8:16 pm
A few years ago, I read as many Robert Parker books as possible as a way of returning to my native Massachusetts after living far away for a long time. I once read an interview with Parker where he said that he would have been just as successful if he had based Spenser in Houston, that it was the character not the setting that made the series successful. My gut reaction was: that is not true; and I did not dwell much more on it lest my enjoyment be lessened.
To me, Parker is something of a parvenu. He was identified with Boston when he was, as I am, from the Connecticut River Valley in Western Massachusetts. People tend to capitalize both words as if it were its own separate region from eastern Massachusetts. For me, some of Parker’s most authentic writing were the stand-alone passages in Double Play, his novel about Jackie Robinson, where a very young Robert Parker is listening to the Dodger games from his home in Springfield, where Parker grew up.
If I remember my novels correctly, Wheaton of Pale Kings and Princes is Ware, Massachusetts, on the eastern edge of the Connecticut River Valley. I know well the streets there and when Spenser is going about town, his route was as clear to me as if he were riding the Green Line trolley in Boston. The motel where Spenser stayed seemed to be located on stretch of Route 9 along the Quabbin Reservoir where an isolated restaurant stood ( and may still be there for all I know ) miles from any other business and where even houses are far apart.
June 1st, 2019 at 9:15 pm
Ware is a town that I should have heard about before, but for whatever reason, though it’s maybe only 50 or 60 miles from me, I haven’t. It’s a little east, more or less, from Northampton and Amherst, for the benefit of anyone who’s heard of those towns. (I had to look at a map.)
From your description, Daryl, I think you’re spot on in making the Wheaton connection. For what it’s worth, the movie was actually filmed in Paris, Ontario, and no, I didn’t look at a map to see where that is. It looked authentic enough to me, though. I don’t think setting the Parker books in Houston would have been a good idea. I think they’re Boston and blue collar Massachusetts books through and through, as much as Parker may have suggested otherwise.
June 1st, 2019 at 10:06 pm
Parker, Spenser, and their shared milieu, are as tied together as Chandler, Marlowe, and LA, Spillane, Hammer, and New York, or MacDonald, McGee, and Florida. That isn’t a knock of Parker’s skills, just a recognition that setting and character played a major role in the authors success, just as London did Sherlock Holmes or Limehouse Fu Manchu.
Part of the gifts that any writer possesses is the ability to give life to places in their imagination or their experience. It is no slight to any author to say his choice of milieu is as important as voice or style. For Parker it was Boston and its environs. Set anywhere else I doubt Spenser would have been anywhere near the same character.
Anyway, Houston had David Lindsay and was taken.