TELEVISION: ‘Consultant’ utilizes actor’s malevolence well

Christoph Waltz's face deserved a series. The breakout star of Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film "Inglourious Basterds" has long excelled at playing the finicky, penetrating villain. Observant, charismatic, he brings a physicality to his roles that intimidates precisely because it is neither imposing nor muscle-bound.

Prime Video's "The Consultant" spins a psychological thriller with comic overtones around that trademark malevolent courtesy. The result is deliciously creepy and not entirely coherent. It feels like a ghost story you hear around the campfire; uncanny and underexplained, but pleasing nevertheless.

The eight-episode series, created and written by Tony Basgallop, is an extremely loose adaptation of Bentley Little's 2015 novel of the same name. In both, a sinister consultant named Regus Patoff shows up to assess and advise a company in crisis called CompWare.