Living Next Door to Malice
This ITV six-parter doesn't just rewrite the prescribed play-book of any number of cosy, popular, long-standing small-town murder-related series like "Murder She Wrote", "Bergerac" or the much-mocked "Midsomer Murders", to name but three, it gleefully and wantonly rips it up and shreds it. On the surface, sure, it's an identifiable-enough murder mystery featuring at its dark heart a psychopathic minister of the church whose crimes are covered up by his complicit, fellow-preacher wife, but with its lashings of black humour, mad characterisations and crazy situations, it certainly stands out from the pack.
It's probably a love it or hate it show, inviting the viewer to continually suspend disbelief as it deliberately piles up one jaw-dropping situation after another. In our household, my wife thought it was daft as it went right over her head, but I have to say that I absolutely loved it.
The casting is inspired and don't they all just love playing their roles to the hilt as murder and mayhem come to the sleepy Scottish village of Coldwater. Andrew Lincoln and Indira Varma are the London couple John and Fiona who, with their two young children and ill-fated cat Harlequin (stupid name for a cat!), have come north to save their marriage after she's had an affair and he a nervous breakdown triggered by an act of cowardly non-intervention on his part when a young mother is attacked in front of him in broad daylight by a thuggish bully.
Unfortunately for them, their new next-door neighbour is Pastor Tommy and his wife Rebecca, both played with utter mad-eyed relish by Ewen Bremner and Eve Myles. It all kicks off after John upsets an abusive young village hot-head, recalling his earlier episode and then literally runs into his tormentor again, as you do, when he goes out for an after-midnight run through the woods. You'd think the best person to help him out of his resultant jam would be holy man Tommy, but in truth this is where John's troubles really begin...
With a supporting cast featuring many familiar Scottish faces, it's a brilliantly unhinged super-charged satire which never forgets its first obligation to involve and excite the viewer. What other show would take the climactic final fight between John and Tommy and then suddenly black-out the screen mid-scene, before setting up a number of teasers for the second series which must surely come.
I may be getting carried away with myself here but with its echoes of "Pulp Fiction" and "The Shining", this was about the most fun I've had watching a crime drama all year.
It's probably a love it or hate it show, inviting the viewer to continually suspend disbelief as it deliberately piles up one jaw-dropping situation after another. In our household, my wife thought it was daft as it went right over her head, but I have to say that I absolutely loved it.
The casting is inspired and don't they all just love playing their roles to the hilt as murder and mayhem come to the sleepy Scottish village of Coldwater. Andrew Lincoln and Indira Varma are the London couple John and Fiona who, with their two young children and ill-fated cat Harlequin (stupid name for a cat!), have come north to save their marriage after she's had an affair and he a nervous breakdown triggered by an act of cowardly non-intervention on his part when a young mother is attacked in front of him in broad daylight by a thuggish bully.
Unfortunately for them, their new next-door neighbour is Pastor Tommy and his wife Rebecca, both played with utter mad-eyed relish by Ewen Bremner and Eve Myles. It all kicks off after John upsets an abusive young village hot-head, recalling his earlier episode and then literally runs into his tormentor again, as you do, when he goes out for an after-midnight run through the woods. You'd think the best person to help him out of his resultant jam would be holy man Tommy, but in truth this is where John's troubles really begin...
With a supporting cast featuring many familiar Scottish faces, it's a brilliantly unhinged super-charged satire which never forgets its first obligation to involve and excite the viewer. What other show would take the climactic final fight between John and Tommy and then suddenly black-out the screen mid-scene, before setting up a number of teasers for the second series which must surely come.
I may be getting carried away with myself here but with its echoes of "Pulp Fiction" and "The Shining", this was about the most fun I've had watching a crime drama all year.
- Lejink
- 12 ott 2025