A Town Called Malice – Sky Max

Writer: Nick Love

Nick Love’s disappointing new drama A Town Called Malice makes its debut on Sky Max this week, an eight-part series set in the 1980s about London gangsters, a life of crime and hiding out on the Costa del Sol. With four episodes available for preview, this messy and often incoherent drama pays homage to Quentin Tarantino in style and tone – which is often uneven – while prioritising its admittedly chic 1980s aesthetics and celebratory soundtrack choices over narrative coherence and character consistency.

When Gene Lord’s new girlfriend Cindy, “like the doll,” gets into a spot of bother on a date, killing a policeman, they hot-foot it to Spain to stay with Gene’s uncle Tony who seems to have made his fortune abroad. Soon, the rest of the Lord clan follow to avoid police questions at home and are soon embroiled in local corruption and gang warfare. Desperate for the chance to restore their family pride, the Lords are a ruthless lot who’ll let nothing stand in their way – not the police, not other gangs and certainly not Cindy. Trouble is, she might be the worst of the lot.

Love’s drama has a central story that is both basic and overly convoluted with multiple digressions and dead ends that exist to pad out hours of drama. The central premise is an interesting one with a powerful central female character taking the lead in traditionally male genre and proving that she is as intimidating and blood thirsty as any of them, quickly outwitting the declining Lord family as she comes between them and beloved son Gene. Some of this is made to seem accidental, as though these things just happened to Cindy but as the episodes unfold she proves a more resourceful and determined creation than her early storylines suggests, especially when backed into a corner. Just what her backstory is unclear, but episodes five to eight may explain further.

But A Town Called Malice feels like a thinly realised premise that barely has sufficient material to cover the first four episodes never mind the full run. What could have been a 100-minute film is stretched to breaking point, taking credulity and consistency with it. Sometimes this is a stylish 80s celebration of love, music and style, at others a comedy and then a hyper-real combination of Tarantino violence (an overused reference point) and an unfathomable story designed to shock. In the end, the experience just becomes tiresome as different gangs come and go, the stakes keep changing and before long you’ll come to the conclusion that you just don’t care.

Part of the problem is that none of the characters are either sympathetic or sufficiently interesting as antiheroes to keep watching, not even protagonists Gene and Cindy who never progress much beyond a bland Bonnie and Clyde who are neither entirely hapless or truly psychopathic. The Lord family fare no better, a collection of one-note cartoon cliches with anger management issues who swear a lot and have a default mode of aggression with everyone. And while the show is predicated on the idea that Cindy is an unknown quantity that upsets the family balance, it soon feels as though we are just watching multiple versions of the same scene just with different character configurations.

It is a shame because the idea of A Town Called Malice promises much, particularly in the same space as earlier 80s-focused TV treats White Gold and The Gold – the latter doing much better with the organised crime concept – along with an incredible cast that includes Jason Fleming, Martha Plimpton and leads Tahirah Sharif and Jack Rowan, not to mention a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from the Modfather himself Paul Weller in Episode One. But Love’s rambling drama is more in love with itself than in the story it is trying to tell and, despite the impressive attention to detail, ultimately you won’t care enough to make it to the end of the series.

A Town Called Malice is screening on Sky Max from 16 March.