When casting for a psychological thriller, Jack Whitehall probably isn’t the first person that comes to mind. But Prime Video’s new series Malice dared to dream, giving Whitehall – famed for stand-up comedy and trotting the globe with his grumpy dad for Netflix – the sinister lead role.
It goes as well as you expect it to…
In the schmaltzy drama, Whitehall stars as Adam, a tutor who folds himself into the life of the rich and affluent Tanner family, led by venture capitalist Jamie (David Duchovny) and fashion designer Nat (Carice van Houten). Before long, he’s tearing them apart in increasingly extravagant – and deadly – ways.
We meet rich-but-distant couple Jamie and Nat at their luxury villa in coastal Greece (as good a place to begin a thriller as any, I suppose) and they make their dynamic obvious when they slip off for a quickie as their kids play in the pool. Jamie barely notices that Nat is reading a magazine while he ruts behind her, and instead of the intended sexiness, the scene plays out like an awkward comedy sketch (or at least an excuse to show Duchovny’s bum).
In fact, this sex scene is rather symbolic of Malice from this point on: what should be a fun time, turns out to be a grunt to the finish line.
Whitehall, second left, stars with, left to right, Carice van Houten, David Duchovny, Raza Jaffrey and Christine Adams (Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/Prime UK)Adam arrives to teach their friends’ child and impresses the Tanners with his “charisma”: casual WH Auden poetry recitals, Greek mythology fact-drops, and being nice to their three children, Kit, April and Dexter. While Jamie is a little hesitant to accept the holiday “freeloader”, soon they’re on a lads’ night out at the world’s most depressing strip club.
Arriving back at the villa, Jamie passes out on the veranda, and Adam monologues his plan to “leave him with nothing”. Why is he doing this? How far will he go? Both questions have really stupid answers.
When the Tanners’ nanny mysteriously quits and disappears after a bout of food poisoning (guess who’s to blame for that?), Jamie and Nat poach Adam’s services and move him into their swanky London house. With his feet under the table, Adam kick-starts his vengeance mission – killing off pets, tearing apart Jamie’s reputation, and fracturing the family.
Whitehall has shown off his acting chops in the past, with emotional beats in comedies Bad Education and Fresh Meat showing potential, but he is completely miscast in Malice. His comic prowess could have been used to explain the rose-tinted glasses the family sees Adam through or, God forbid, give him a personality. Instead, we get him staring blankly and monotonal in every scene (even ones involving literal orgies), looking less mysteriously aloof and more “deer in headlights”.
Duchovny – an actor who has four Emmy nominations, two of which are for playing Mulder in The X-Files – is also not at his best. Running at 60 per cent, he can barely bring himself to act angry when Jamie is forced to defend allegations of “sending inappropriate emails” to a staffer, or row with the man “ruining his life”. I can’t help but think that the entire cast is phoning it in for the free Grecian getaway.
Adam’s motivations for ruining the Tanners’ lives barely make sense, even with Charlotte Riley on hand as his sister to spoon-feed us some context. But honestly, who needs a fully-fleshed backstory on our antagonist, when you can dedicate significant screen time to his pet snake?
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It’s easy to blame Whitehall for the show’s failings – the truth is he’s perfectly serviceable to the scripts placed before him. The story moves at a snail’s pace with clunky dialogue and a complete lack of the suspense needed to make a thriller work. Plots come and go without conclusion, and – worst of all – it’s boring. The acting is just the nail in the coffin.
I truly wanted to enjoy Malice. The plot sounded like it would suit my palate for digestible, easy viewing. But by the time I got to the end of the sixth and final episode, the biggest mystery was how I had managed to keep myself awake.
‘Malice’ is streaming on Prime Video
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