Imposter thriller Malice presents a "manny" from hell and almost no subtlety

Any show in which David Duchovny plays a rich dick with a chokingly self-satisfied air about him is at least worth a look, no? The guy has a natural onscreen charisma going back to his The X-Files days and can, as any fan of The Larry Sanders Show no doubt knows, be quite funny. Throw in his looks and delivery, and the veteran actor is well suited to tackle a success who says very inappropriate and offensive things and presents them with a winking “I yam what I yam” charm that, in his eyes (at least by the looks of his body language), is always killing. “I don’t want my beautiful 16-year-old daughter getting felt up in a tent by some pimply faced, ketamine sniffing metalhead from Eton,” his Malice character says at one point to grown-ups in front of that very daughter. “It was more of a titty bar,” he plainly clarifies to a police officer in front of his wife, Nat (Game Of Thrones‘ Carice van Houten). “Nat and I have a rule: Blowjobs aren’t cheating—at least, that’s my rule,” he drunkenly confides with a smile to a new “manny” (his words) named Adam (Jack Whitehall, comedian and creator of BBC Three’s Bad Education) at that aforementioned strip club. He also tells his youngest kid to “shut up” quite a lot. You get the idea.  

And knowing within the first couple of minutes that the world of Duchovny’s Jamie, a shark of a venture capitalist who is introduced as vibing very hard to “Sweet Thing” by Mick Jagger (out of all of the songs in 1993, who on Earth, including The Stones’ frontman, loves this one to this extent?), is going to eventually crumble only makes Malice more appealing in a cathartic kind of way. We know all this because this series from writer James Wood (BBC One’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline And Fall, which also starred Whitehall) very badly wants us to, showing us a literal snake in the grass at Jamie’s Greek island vacation estate as his family meets Adam and is quickly won over by him. If that metaphor wasn’t enough to make it crystal clear what’s happening here, we’re shown Adam snapping out of character each time one of his new employers turns their back. (It’s not shifty-eyed-dog territory—Whitehall is admittedly good in this—but, even without muttering much of his schemes verbally, his intentions are very loudly presented.) Oh, and he also owns another snake and says things to it like “go cause some chaos” with a menacing glare.   

You see, Adam is convinced that Jamie wronged him somehow (the exact reason doesn’t come to light until curiously quite late into this six-episode run) and, to bring him down, infiltrates and messes with him and his loved ones, including close-couple friends (played by Christine Adams and Raza Jaffrey), as well as his wife and kids. And soon enough, Adam is using poison, a cricket bat, drugs, booze, and compromising photos to do so, even getting frantic himself as the walls start closing in on him and his story. At first blush, this setup might call to mind a con-man-camouflaged-in-upper-crust-society thriller like Ripley. But even with Malice‘s enviable coastal digs and Adam settling into this one-percenter lifestyle, that feels like an oversell and unapt. Steven Zaillian’s miniseries was much more of a patient and artful character study. And it’d be like comparing Malice to imposter comedies like The Cable Guy (or revenge ones like Clifford, speaking of ’90s flops) just because they share some of the same log-line DNA. This is much more of a cliffhanger-fueled show, addictive in a way that you may want to plow through the whole thing on a long flight but may not feel the need to discuss anything about what you just saw with your travel partner afterward.