{"id":2156010,"date":"2025-11-14T09:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T09:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2156010"},"modified":"2025-11-14T09:15:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T09:15:18","slug":"jack-whitehall-as-a-buff-suave-psychopath-it-weirdly-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/jack-whitehall-as-a-buff-suave-psychopath-it-weirdly-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Whitehall as a buff, suave psychopath? It weirdly works"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Malice <\/em>(Amazon Prime Video) is a psychological thriller in which comedian Jack Whitehall<\/a> plays the psycho. How did this casting happen? It\u2019s like watching an Attenborough film of wildebeest moving across the Serengeti and in the middle of them there\u2019s a man dressed in a penguin suit.<\/p>\n

During all of his scenes, in which he plays a tutor who inveigles his way into the lives of a wealthy family at their Greek holiday villa, your brain will be screaming: \u201cBut it\u2019s Jack Whitehall!<\/em>\u201d Especially in a scene where he strangles a cat.<\/p>\n

I did enjoy it, mind you. Mercifully, it\u2019s a drama that doesn\u2019t take itself very seriously. It\u2019s sunny and silly. David Duchovny<\/a>, who plays the father of the family, looks as if he\u2019s having a ball. His character, Jamie Tanner, is a ruthless, libidinous venture capitalist, married to Nat (Carice van Houten). The Tanners have invited their London friends to holiday with them, and the friends have brought a tutor along because daughter Millie has flunked her mocks. This is a very specific level of middle-class wealth.<\/p>\n

Adam (Whitehall) is a hit with the kids, because he organises games and makes Ancient Greek history sound fun, and a hit with the wives, because he\u2019s charming, rustles up \u201cgin-a-colada\u201d cocktails and has defined abs. \u201cBut it\u2019s Jack Whitehall,<\/em>\u201d that voice inside your head says as they lust over his shirtless form during a boat trip. This is the man who has made a career out of being poshly, boyishly awkward.<\/p>\n

It soon becomes clear that Adam is here because he has a vendetta against Jamie. The history between them is not revealed in the early episodes \u2013 only two were made available to reviewers \u2013 so we\u2019re in the dark about the source of this hatred. There are shades of Nineties film The Hand That Rocks the Cradle <\/em>as Adam schemes away while acting as the perfect help.<\/p>\n

With the exception of Duchovny and van Houten, the cast is British. And so is the script. I\u2019m pretty sure Adam is the only screen psychopath who describes sex as \u201cbonking\u201d. And here he is on the Greek gods: \u201cZeus basically tried to shag anything\u2026 by today\u2019s standards, I think the king of the gods would quite rightly find himself cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most jarring moments are when Whitehall attempts to be menacing. A seasoned dramatic actor could do something with a scene in which Adam batters an octopus against a hard surface to tenderise the meat. Ditto the cat scene. When Adam says: \u201cFoodies,\u201d to lure kitty towards him, it just gives you the ick.<\/p>\n

But in the end it sort of works. You\u2019re watching a character who knows he shouldn\u2019t really be there, played by a man who knows he shouldn\u2019t really be there. Look at it that way, and perhaps the casting is a stroke of genius.<\/p>\n

Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malice (Amazon Prime Video) is a psychological thriller in which comedian Jack Whitehall plays the psycho. How did this casting happen? It\u2019s like watching an Attenborough film of wildebeest moving across the Serengeti and in the middle of them there\u2019s a man dressed in a penguin suit. During all of his scenes, in which he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2156011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[306113,354338,369778,353404,392174,330682],"class_list":["post-2156010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-amazon-prime-video","tag-carice-van-houten","tag-david-duchovny","tag-jack-whitehall","tag-jamie-tanner","tag-psychological-thriller"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Jack-Whitehall-as-a-buff-suave-psychopath-It-weirdly-works.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2156010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2156012,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156010\/revisions\/2156012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2156011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2156010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2156010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2156010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}