Clive Owen was excellent on the 1900-set medical drama “The Knick,” which is available on Max, if you’re looking for a binge. Directed by Steven Soderbergh in 2014-15, the two-season show gives us Owen at his darkest, as an addict who is obsessed with forwarding the use of surgery at a New York hospital. Those primitive surgery scenes are both fascinating and gross.
Owen is currently playing an ego-challenged billionaire on “A Murder at the End of the World,” and, happily, he’ll be on a new miniseries premiering Jan. 14 on AMC. The show is called “Monsieur Spade,” and it’s a twist on Dashiell Hammett’s P.I. Sam Spade, portrayed most famously by Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon” in 1941. Owen’s version is Spade in retirement in the South of France, enjoying the peace, out of the biz. But then the murder of six nuns at the local convent pries him out of his relaxation. Just when he thought he was out, etc. The series will be six episodes long, and Alfre Woodard and Dean Winters are also in the cast.
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The co-creators of “Monsieur Space” are Scott Frank and Tom Fontana, which is good news. Frank wrote the movies “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” and “Minority Report,” and he wrote and directed the miniseries “Godless” and “The Queen’s Gambit.” And the celebrated Fontana has written for “St. Elsewhere,” “Homicide: Life on the Street, and “Oz,” which he created. I still think of “Oz” (1997-2003) as one of the important roots of the prestige TV era triggered by HBO back in the late 1990s, alongside “Sex and the City” and “The Larry Sanders Show.” They all premiered before “The Sopranos” changed everything in 1999.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him @MatthewGilbert.