'Malice' Amazon MGM Studios Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment If there's one thing audiences can't get enough of, based on the adoration for shows from The White Lotus to Succession to Big Little Lies, it's watching wealthy white families suffer. We like to ooh and ahh over their luxe lifestyles, to judge them for their callousness, to watch them realize that all the money in the world can't buy fulfillment, to see if they'll learn their lesson or get their comeuppance. If the destabilizing force comes in the form of a mysterious and possibly sinister interloper, all the better. In the past few months alone, shows from All Her Fault to The Girlfriend to Sirens have offered variations on that theme, to varying degrees of excitement. Related Stories TV David Duchovny to Investigate Real-Life 'X-Files' for History, Tyler Perry Teams Up With Lifetime General News Alec Baldwin Opens Up About 'Rust' Shooting Case: "I Think There's More to Come" Malice The Bottom Line As cold and empty as its villain. Airdate: Friday, Nov. 14 (Prime Video)Cast: Jack Whitehall, David Duchovny, Carice van Houten, Christine Adams, Raza JaffreyCreator: James Wood In that light, the appeal of Prime Video's latest miserable-rich-people thriller should be obvious. Malice pits a ruthless venture capitalist (David Duchovny, lending the show its only real star power) against a coldhearted snake in the grass (Jack Whitehall's Adam), with appropriately dark results. But it's lacking in any actual raison d'être - some deeper theme or surprising subversion or virtuosic artistry that might set it apart from the roughly ten thousand other stories we've seen of this ilk already. It's as hollow as the smiling villain at its center. What we are left with, in the absence of any compelling point, is a string of events to watch transpire between several people who are neither likable nor particularly interesting. There is some tension in wondering how far any of them might go as things spiral out of control over six hour-long episodes, though not very much, since - as seems to be de rigueur for stories like this one - Malice starts at the end, with Adam being informed by law enforcement that his former employer, Jamie Tanner (Duchovny), has recently run into some serious trouble. Adam purports to be horrified, but not especially surprised since, he sighs sadly, "Jamie Tanner was not a very nice man." So while the specific details are left vague (and I'm being vaguer still so as to avoid spoilers), there's not much mystery as to what happened to Jamie, or who's behind it. The only real question is why. But even after the show jumps back several months to chronicle the events leading up to that fateful event, it declines to offer anything but the murkiest suggestion of a motive until too late in the game. Adam first enters the Tanners' lives via their friends, the Sahanis (Christine Adam and Raza Jaffrey), an upper-middle-class couple who've hired him to tutor their daughter and decided they like him enough to bring him along on their summer vacation. From the moment the Sahanis arrive in Greece, however, it's clear Adam's real interest lies with the Tanners, the much wealthier family hosting them in their villa. In a matter of days, Adam ingratiates himself with each member of the Tanner clan. To Nat (Carice van Houten), he's considerate and empathetic in ways her self-centered husband is not; it doesn't hurt that he's also handsome and a bit flirty. To said husband, he's a drinking buddy and co-conspirator. To their kids, teenagers Kit (Harry Gilby) and April (Teddie Allen) and 9-year-old Dexter (Phoenix Laroche), he's a teacher, a confidant, a tireless playmate. By the end of the trip, he's maneuvered himself into a permanent job as their live-in nanny in London, where he can really get cooking on his plan to systematically destroy everything this family holds dear. Which seems, in theory, like it should be satisfying. Duchovny nails the cruel carelessness of men who are rich enough to have removed nearly all friction from their lives, yet who cannot help feeling aggrieved that they haven't been able to get rid of all of it. "I suppose I'm the one footing the bill here?" he whines when Dexter's nanny (Pheonix Jackson Mendoza) falls ill enough that she needs to be helicoptered to the nearest city. He misses no opportunity to passive-aggressively put down his son or "jokingly" put his wife in her place, or to yell at the nearest underpaid employee for failing to deliver the impossible. He is precisely the kind of character you should want to see bad things happen to. The problem is that in Malice, created by James Wood, those bad things are being done by a man vile enough that he'll kill a cat without flinching or severely harm an innocent bystander without a s