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THE THRILLING DETECTIVE GIFT SHOP
I had about given up on this page, given that Blu-Ray and DVD releases are becoming scarcer and scarcer (except for the lucrative collectors market), when I realized I was missing out on theatrical and streaming releases. So if I miss something, please let me know.
2026
- Criminal
Ambitious live action take on Brubaker and Phillips’ sprawling, multi-generational crime saga. It’s coming, it’s coming… (TBA, Amazon Prime) - Spider Noir
Nicolas Cage, who’d previously voiced Spider-Man Noir in the 2018 animated feature Into the Spider-Verse, will star as BEN REILLY, an aging and down on his luck private eye in 1930s New York City trying to come to terms with his past life as The Spider, the city’s one and only superhero. (May 27, 2026, Amazon Prime) - RJ Decker
I’m still trying to get my head around this one. Carl Hiaasen is one of the executive producers, but so far, this is Hiaasen-lite; a tamped down version of Florida that features plenty of the expected quirk, but none of the gonzo. Nothing too out there; nothing that draws blood. It’s better than Tracker, but not by much. So far. - Daredevil: Born Again Season 2
Defense attorney Matt Murdock gets by with a little help from an old friend this time around: private investigator Jessica Jones. (March 2026, Disney+) - The Lincoln Lawyer
Round four tries picks up right after the previous season’s unnecessary WTF cliffhanger finale, with Mickey now awaiting trial for murder. (February 2026, Netflix)
2025
- Wake Up Dead Man
Daniel Craig stars as Benoit Blanc returns in his third film, this time alongside Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and
Thomas Haden Church, as he takes on his “most dangerous case” yet. Written and directed, as usual, by Rian Johnson. (Premieres in theaters December 12, 2025) - Forks Out
For those of you who can’t wait for Wake Up Dead Man, the highly anticipated return of Benoit Blanc next week, the world’s other greatest detective, Beignet Blanc, is on Sesame Street in this shortie, cracking the case of the missing triple berry pie. (Netflix, December 4, 2025) - A Man on the Inside
For those of you who enjoyed the first season, Charles is back, now officially working with Julie as a private investigator, taking on a variety of small cases, but chomping at the bit for something a little more challenging. The big case arrives when they’re approached by Wheeler College president Jack Beringer and provost Holly Bodgemark, who want the firm to find Beringer’s stolen laptop. Soon enough, Charles is of course over his head, bumbling his way through a case that involves blackmail, vandalism, a pompous billionaire (Gary Cole) and a new love interest: sexy Wheeler music theory professor Mona Margadoff (played by Danson’s real life wife, Mary Steenbergen). (November 20, 2025, Netflix) - Down Cemetery Road
This could be a biggie. Emma Thompson stars as hard-nosed, coldly pragmatic private investigator Zoë Boehm, created by Mick (Slow Horses) Herron. Also starring Adam Godley as her husband and fellow P.I. (but far less pragmatic) Joe Silverman, and Ruth Wilson as Sarah Tucker, the mother searching for a missing neighbourhood girl. (October 2025, AppleTV+) - Play Dirty | Watch it now!
Richard (Donald Westlake) Stark’s hard-as-nails professional thief Parker is re-reincarnated in this bang-bang-bang action thriller, directed and co-written by Shane Black and played by wisecracking, smarmy Mark Wahlberg. Lots of things go boom, the violence is often gratuitous, and the too-often-jokey tone are a far cry from anything in the grim, tight novels. Wahlberg tries to tone it down, but fails. A Dortmunder caper would have been a better choice for adaptation. (October 1, AmazonPrime) - The Lowdown
Excellent pulp-flecked, gonzo mini-series starring Ethan Hawke as a disheveled, self-styled “truthstorian” out to solve the alleged suicide of a man whose brother is a powerful Tulsa politico (Kyle MacLachlan). Written by Reservation Dogs Sterlin Harjo. (September 2025, FX) - Highest 2 Lowest
Director Spike Lee and Denzel Washington team up for the fifth time in this bold remix of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, itself based on the 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain. (Premieres August 22, 2025 for limited release, before streaming on AppleTV+ in September). - Honey Don’t! | Buy the Blu-Ray | Watch it now!
Actor Margaret Qualley and director/writer Ethan Coen reunite after Drive Away Dolls, in what’s being billed as the second in a “lesbian B-movie trilogy.” Small town private eye Honey O’Donahue (Qualley) goes up against a church which may be behind a string of mysterious deaths. Also starring Chris Evans,Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day and Billy Eichner. (U.S. premiere August 24, 2025) - Detectives These Days Are Crazy!
Light-hearted almost slapstick anime about aging “boy detective” Keiirchiro Nagumo facing the cold realities of middle age (“Oh, my back!”), and the unwanted demands of a high school girl who insists on being his assistant. (July 2025, Crunchyroll) - Bosch: Legacy: The Final Season | Watch it now!
Season three, with Harry still ostensibly a private eye, even if the show still seems more like an LAPD version of the 87th Precinct at times… (Premieres March 27, 2025) - Reacher: Season Three | Watch it now!
The Big Man is back! (Premieres February 20, 2025, Amazon Prime)
2024
- Here’s Flash Casey | Buy the Blu-Ray
A zippy treat from 1938! George Harmon Coxe‘s two-fisted news photographer Flashgun Casey — straight from the pages of Black Mask — drives both the cops and his editor crazy. (December 2024) - Man on the Inside
A quiet, retired engineering professor (Ted Danson) goes undercover for a private eye at an old folks home to capture a jewel thief, in this unexpectedly touching and sharp comedy mini-series. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. (Netflix, November 2024) - Blue Christmas | Buy the DVD | Buy the Blu-Ray | Watch the trailer!
Writer/director Max Allan Collins has a little fun with this mash-up of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It’s Christmas Eve and Chicago private dick (and he really is a dick) Richard Stone is about to have a few unwanted visitors. (November 2024) - Killer Heat | Watch it now!
Pretty looking but by the numbers noir wannabe, starring Joseph Gordon Levitt as an ex-pat P.I. on the island of Crete, investigating the tragic “accident” of an heir to a vast family fortune. (September 2024, Amazon Prime) - Wolfs
Two rival political fixers are both hired to do the same job, and are forced to team up in this goofy action thriller. It certainly helps that the two fixers are played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt. (September 2024, AppleTV+) - Troppo
It’s back! Season Two of the gritty, sweaty, swampy and totally awesome Aussie crime drama, featuring the uneasy partnership of Queensland private eyes Amanda Pharrell and Ted Conkaffey and about a million ways to die (mostly nasty, some involving crocodiles) is back. Based on the acclaimed Crimson Lake series by Candice Fox, this is a most excellent alternative to So Help Me, Todd and Tracker. This is the real deal. (Premieres August 2024, Amazon Prime) - Bad Monkey
A former Miami cop becomes obsessed with discovering the source of a severed human arm fished out of the ocean by a tourist. As one does. A lotta fun so far, and the soundtrack is tasty, with some great Tom Petty covers by the like of Eddie Vedder, the War on Drugs, Sharon Van Etten, Larkin Poe, Kurt Vile, Lissie, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Weezer, Nathaniel Rateliff and Marcus King. (Premieres August 14, 2024; AppleTV+) - The Fall Guy | Watch it now!
(Very) loosely based on the 1980s TV cheesiest, this big budget action flick, starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt and about a million explosions, may just be the smartest (and most fun) dumb movie about movies I’ve seen in years. - City Hunter
Yet another stab at the franchise that refuses to die. Originally a cheesy manga series from the eighties, about Ryo Saeba, a self-styled private eye with deadly aim and a perpetual hard-on, this latest version, filmed in Japanese but dubbed in English is enthusiastically juvenile, full of action pieces, single entendres and over-acting. (May 2024, Netflix) - The Dead Boy Detectives
Originally a HBO production, it’s been scooped up by Netflix, which is boasting “a fresh take on a ghost story that explores loss, grief, and death through the lens of Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland…and their very alive friend, Crystal Palace. It’s a lot like a vintage detective series — only darker and on acid.” (April 2024, Netflix) - Sugar
Colin Farrell stars as a John Sugar, a Los Angeles private eye with a shitload of personal problems (naturally), who’s hired to find a Hollywood producer’s beloved granddaughter, in this Apple TV+ series, created by Mark Protosevich and directed by Fernando Meirelles. Besides Farrell, it stars Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Amy Ryan, Dennis Boutsikaris, Alex Hernandez and Lindsay Pulsipher. Sounds good, right? Don’t get your hopes up too high. (Premieres April 5, 2024).
- Elsbeth
A spin-off of sorts from The Good Wife (and its sequel, The Good Fight) finds weirdo lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni (played with Emmy-winning WTF? charm by Carrie Preston) in her own show, relocating from Chicago to New York City to keep an eye on the NYPD as part ofd the federal government’s consent decree. Looks promising, and having Wendell Pierce and Gloria Reuben as co-stars and Michelle King and Robert King in the writers room can’t hurt. (Premieres February 29, 2024, CBS). - Tracker
CBS takes on Jeffrey Deaver’s popular series, with This is Us alumni Justin Hartley starring as Colter Shaw, an oddball with a “very particular set of skills,” who wanders the country in an RV, tracking down missing persons for the reward. (Premieres February 2024, CBS) - Monsieur Spade
C’est quoi cette merde? This new six-part series (also available on Acorn) gives us Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett’s iconic San Francisco hard-boiled dick Sam Spade, now older (if not wiser), retired and living in France. Owens might make for a convincing Spade, but the whole thing is more about branding than anything else. “Nobody cares about that Sam Spade anymore,” says Owens in the trailer—and this farce seems to be ample proof of that. Owens fails to channel the oft-mentioned Bogart. Or even Hammett’s “blond Satan,” but he does okay. It’s the whole premise that really needs work. (January 2024, AMC+/Acorn)
