Posted 7:00 AM by Gerald So
You may remember ABC's 1985–'88 SPENSER: FOR HIRE fondly, but Robert B. Parker didn't love it. According to Jeremiah Healy's tribute essay "Bob, Boston, and Me: A Remembrance" from the 2012 collection IN PURSUIT OF SPENSER, Parker disliked Robert Urich's casting from the start. He gave in when he was offered the alternative, Erik Estrada.
Urich and Avery Brooks reprised their roles in four 1993–'95 Lifetime movies (SPENSER: CEREMONY, SPENSER: PALE KINGS AND PRINCES, SPENSER: THE JUDAS GOAT, SPENSER: A SAVAGE PLACE), but the other regulars (Susan Silverman, Frank Belson, and Martin Quirk) were recast. Parker and his wife Joan were credited with the screenplays, but when they watched the finished movies, they claimed to recognize nothing from their scripts.
From 1999 to 2001, A&E gave Parker full creative control of three movies: SPENSER: SMALL VICES, THIN AIR, and WALKING SHADOW. Joe Mantegna was cast as Spenser. Some said miscast. Parker, however, approved, saying Mantegna had read his books and could act like Spenser. (Since that casting, Mantegna has been the Spenser audiobook reader.) Parker's words indeed played onscreen, but the movies weren't the snappy perfection you'd hope. Parker's prose could be mannered at times. Hearing all the actors speak this way betrayed the fact he put the words in their mouths. TV series, by contrast, use writers' rooms led by showrunners, everyone working to make the characters spontaneous and distinct.
Shiek Mahmud-Bey plays Hawk in SPENSER: SMALL VICES. He has Golden Gloves boxing experience, but unlike the books, where Hawk is Spenser's age, Mahmud-Bey is about twenty years Mantegna's junior. A better match is Luis Guzman as Spenser's similarly lethal friend Chollo in THIN AIR. Finally, Hawk is recast with Ernie Hudson in WALKING SHADOW, leaving the actors no chance to improve their chemistry, the secret sauce of Spenser stories.
The Joe Mantegna Spenser movies stand out because they weren't distributed on home video as widely or for as long as other adaptations of Parker's work. SPENSER: FOR HIRE is available on DVD from Warner Archive and streaming on Roku and Tubi. The four Urich Spenser movies got a DVD set from Rykodisc. The nine Tom Selleck Jesse Stone movies are on DVD from Sony and streaming on Roku, Tubi, and Pluto TV. The 2008 APPALOOSA film is on DVD from Warner Bros. and streaming on Max. 2020's SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL is on Netflix.
Of the Mantegna movies, only SMALL VICES was released on VHS in the United States. THIN AIR got a DVD release internationally, I believe. Bottom line, the Mantegna movies were hard to find, but I found them on YouTube the other day. If you're curious, search them out and let me know what you think.
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