TV review: A Town Called Malice could have been great - but why do I feel cheated?

It’s rammed full of songs from the 1980s, which feels like a desperate attempt to cover up for the rush job of the script and the plastic characters

Set amongst the beach clubs and palm trees of the Costa del Sol in the early 80s, A Town Called Malice follows the Lords, a crime family of petty thieves from South London, as they decamp from London to Spain to profit from an unexpected windfall – and to escape the attention of the police in a high-profile murder enquiry.

I watched A Town Called Malice (Sky MAX and NOW) right up to the closing credits. I wanted to confirm if the geezer who finished his pint and walked out of the pub at the start was Paul Weller, who wrote and sang the song with The Jam. (It was.) They didn’t credit any cameo, but I noticed that the show had largely been shot in Tenerife.

It’s just another thing wrong with A Town Called Malice. The premise is that a 1980s South London crime family — the Lords — are run out of town and end up on the Costa del Sol. The problem is that most of us have been on the Costa del Sol at some point in our lives and we know that it’s a long strip of beaches hemmed in by the mountains, as against the curvy hills in Tenerife.