There are three things you need to know right away about Malice, Amazon’s new six-part psychological thriller. One is that it is trying to infiltrate the TV zeitgeist of “wealth porn”, riding on the sumptuous, elegant coattails of shows such as The White Lotus and Succession. The second is that it’s not so much a whodunit, or even a who-snuffed-it, but rather a whydunit. And the third is that it stars Jack Whitehall playing it (almost) straight as a male nanny.
Leaning into his toff-boy shtick, he is the manny-slash-private tutor who inveigles his way into the life of David Duchovny’s boorish venture capitalist Jamie Tanner, before cunningly wreaking havoc on the Tanner family’s luxury holiday on a Greek island. It’s pantomime stuff, with Whitehall embracing the role with cartoonish gusto, his Adam by turns charming and obsequious.
