Zippy, brash and so 80s it’s exhausting, this murder-packed gangland show is sheer mindless entertainment
Is it Peaky Blinders but 50 years on with cockney accents? Is it Gangs of London but 50 years ago with sunshine? Is it McMafia but worth watching? The answer is yes. Sky’s new drama series A Town Called Malice is, fairly unabashedly, a little bit of every crime family thriller of the past few years, this time set – completely unabashedly – in the 1980s.
I mean, goodness, is it the 80s. The show and each of the eight episodes is named after an 80s pop hit (don’t write in to tell me that Daddy Cool was ackcherly late 70s. Why be that person, when we all have so little time on the planet?) and almost every scene is accompanied by one of the era’s other big chart tunes, sometimes even with lip-synching from a character – who might be better off kept behind the fourth wall, allowing the series to hang on to its internal logic and vestiges of believability.
A Town Called Malice aired on Sky Max and is on Now TV.
