Recensie SkyShowtime-series ‘A Town Called Malice’

The series recently appeared on SkyShowtime. funny woman about a woman who becomes a TV star in the 1960s. The style wasn’t so much 1960s, more our idea of ​​London at that time. SkyShowtime does it again with A Town Called Malice, but as a crime story in the eighties. Only with this more serious plot it works much less organically and has no function at all. In any case, the whole eighties trend seems to have died out by now.

Cindy meets Gene, one of the sons of the Lord crime family, and they fall head over heels in love. Gene doesn’t want to get involved in his father’s shady dealings, but when an altercation with a rival gang escalates, the young couple must flee to Spain. However, the Costa del Sol turns out not to be a paradise where to rest, but a new source from which to get a good amount of money. Soon the entire Lord family is at the door. And that’s exactly according to someone’s plan.

The English see Spain as a sunny paradise to which they can move once and for all and leave the gray British Isle behind. The movie sexy beast It already showed that there are quite a few dubious figures among them as well and that is certainly not fiction. A Town Called Malice therefore, it is not for nothing that he regularly reminds one of that film. This series also presents crime with a touch of humor.

Because of that nod, the creators think they can get away with sporadic playback performances and a wildly over-the-top 1980s setting. But they were wrong about that, because it doesn’t feel like an organic part of the rest of the series. One minute there’s a dramatic scene between father and son, then suddenly someone is dancing and looking at the camera like it’s a Boney M music video.

A Town Called Malice is an entirely British production, so it is unusual for the role of Mother Lord to be played by American actress Martha Plimpton. The name might not sound familiar, but she was one of two girls who entered the cave with the Goonies, and the best woman has never stopped performing since. Her accent is sometimes too close to what Americans think ordinary English sound like, but nonetheless, she’s on a roll like a mother hen.

There it goes A Town Called Malice about, despite the fact that the criminal violin of the male characters is a little more discussed. It is the women who show how to defend themselves and their children when cornered. He’s not badly executed, but perhaps Malice isn’t the place where that theme is most at home.

The story about drug smuggling and how that money will have to be used to finance the construction of a hotel will appeal more to a male audience. And that won’t feel very invested in the deeper core of the story. But what is more unbelievable by far is the age of one of the main characters. A twenty-nine-year-old actor introduces himself as the father of an actor who is twenty-one years old in real life. This was necessary for the plot, but the viewer is not blind.

However, the characters are fleshed out enough that the whole thing eventually starts to fascinate. They are a bunch of goofballs who have big plans but lack the talent to execute them correctly and their ego gets in the way too so these plans never quite go as expected, all quite funny. His home, which is not on the Costa del Sol but in Tenerife, is enviable and the desert landscape has also been masterfully portrayed.

There’s no reason all of this should necessarily take place in the 1980s. It’s an excuse to cover a lot, a lot, of the pop music of the time, even the credits show the music video for the song playing, and some graphics colorful and neon opening credits. If that and the wacky journeys had been left out, this would have been a slightly better series.

★★★☆☆

A Town Called Malice can be seen in SkyShowtime.