Malice; Never Too Late

“It’s a great ride, and Jack Whitehall acquits himself well in his first lead dramatic role, even if he is better at oblique menace than delivering straightforwardly murderous speeches. David Duchovny is as skilled, nimble and charismatic as ever, giving us a Hank from Californication if he had gone into real estate rather than writing and made enough money to keep his chaos at bay. Moreish, bingeable stuff to take you happily through to Christmas.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Is it entertaining? Yes, if a little ‘potboilerish’, and there are occasional welcome flashes of Whitehall’s wit. But it does become silly at times. Adam gets away with heinous crimes in broad daylight in London, a place where you can’t even get away with doing 23mph, and a weakness is that you don’t care about any of the (privileged) characters. As a psychological thriller it doesn’t have the heft of, say, Sarah Snook’s All Her Fault (on Sky), but it is all good, dark fun.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“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: ‘But it’s Jack Whitehall!’. I did enjoy it, mind you. Mercifully, it’s a drama that doesn’t take itself very seriously. It’s sunny and silly.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The story moves at a snail’s pace with clunky dialogue and a complete lack of the suspense needed to make a thriller work. Plots come and go without conclusion, and – worst of all – it’s boring. The acting is just the nail in the coffin. I truly wanted to enjoy Malice. The plot sounded like it would suit my palate for digestible, easy viewing. But by the time I got to the end of the sixth and final episode, the biggest mystery was how I had managed to keep myself awake.”
Tilly Pearce, The i

“Nuance is not in Malice’s dictionary. Which is a surprise, actually. It’s written by James Wood, the man behind the unassumingly excellent British sitcom Rev. Yet this has the feel of one of those daft US imports shown on E4 about a decade ago: shiny and overblown in the same mould as, say, Revenge. Yes, the gender-flip on the hackneyed toxic-nanny theme is intriguing, but too often the dialogue creaks with exposition and plot contrivances, the cast unable to breathe life into stilted exchanges.”
Patrick Smith, The Independent

“These TV plays are relatable and largely run-of-the-mill. What they are not – and what the strand is always remembered as being – is fresh, inventive or shocking. The first instalment, Never Too Late, cleaves least tightly to the format’s legacy. What follows, unfortunately, is a banal pantomime – it even concludes with a big old singsong – that is maddeningly predictable in plot and naffly daytime soap-esque in presentation.”
Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian

“The opening play, Never Too Late, by the screenwriters Simon Warne and Lydia Marchant, is a thin 45 minutes largely predicated on the joke that old people might just still have sex. I’ve watched a couple of the others and I am sorry to say that the quality doesn’t massively improve, so it does feel as if the broadcaster opened with what they thought was one of the better ones. That this felt so patronising and slightly offensive is odder still when you realise that older people represent the cohort in Britain who watch the most telly and will probably most welcome PfT’s return.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“I’m sure the original BBC run had some long forgotten duffers among its 300-plus productions, but few can have fallen as wheezily flat as Never Too Late, which plays out like a pilot for a sitcom that would have been euthanised long before it got anywhere near a series. Steadfastly ignoring the ‘Today’ part of Play For Today, writers Simon Warne and Lydia Marchant serve up a picture of retirement living that would have been out of date 30 years ago, in a script peppered with lame innuendoes (tits and bush are among the groan-worthy punchlines) and soapy plot twists so hackneyed even EastEnders would have binned them.”
Keith Watson, The Telegraph

“This was hardly a glum drama in the tradition of Play For Today — more of a Comedy Playhouse, the series of sitcom pilots pioneered by Galton & Simpson. The script by Simon Warne and Lydia Marchant was studded with great quips. And it’s fun to see the ageless Nigel Havers, still playing smoothies.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“In resurrecting such a British institution, Channel 5 has already generated enough goodwill to withstand a choppy first instalment. And choppy it really is. While a warm, wistful glow envelops Never Too Late, a romcom about growing old and finding flashes of your flame, the result is soapy and staid, with the characters broad sketches working overtime for laughs.”
Patrick Smith, The Independent