A Stone Cold lock
It's interesting that after all these years, Selleck is finally playing a Parker hero on screen. In the '80s, he was hotly rumored to be starring as Parker's signature character, the one-named private detective called Spenser, in a feature film based on the novel Early Autumn. Due to Selleck's Magnum commitment, the film never got off the ground, and the late Robert Urich ended up making an indelible impression as Spenser in the TV series Spenser: For Hire and a gaggle of telefilm sequels.
After Urich's untimely death from cancer, actor Joe Mantegna picked up the mantle, appearing as Spenser in three A&E cable flicks that should be avoided like a big mean guy you owe money. Mantegna doesn't make an awful Spenser though he's too slight of build and much too New York Italian to be convincing as a Boston-Irish ex-prizefighter, he adds the right tone of smart-alecky toughness and Marcia Gay Harden is infinitely superior to any of the actresses who played Spenser's girlfriend Susan Silverman before her. But the scripts for the three Mantegna Spenser films are execrable, the direction is even worse, and the producers who included Parker and his wife, which is why it's stunning that the movies are so dreadful never found an actor who could replace the charismatic Avery Brooks as Hawk, Spenser's deadly comrade-in-arms.
Jesse Stone is more or less a younger (at least in the books) Spenser with a badge and a drinking problem, so it will be interesting to get a flavor of what Selleck might have done with the role of Boston's greatest detective. I'll be watching.
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