“The remade Upstairs Downstairs is never going to be capable of carrying the weight Thomas seems determined to place on it.” Read on for the verdict on last night’s TV.
“As dispiriting as finding a dead hedgehog on your landing. A dead hedgehog dressed up as Mrs Tiggywinkle, to make it adorable. It doesn’t feel like a show anyone felt driven to make… This is not television, but someone’s work.”
Caitlin Moran, The Times
“This remade format is never going to be capable of carrying the weight [writer] Heidi Thomas seems determined to place on it. The result is dangerous trivialisation, the more so since Thomas’s brilliance at dialogue means that she cannot stop herself writing recklessly comic lines. Upstairs she is possessed by the demon of P. G. Wodehouse; downstairs, when doing the servants, she channels Alan Bennett.”
Andrew Billen, The Times
“Obviously, it’s a ratings-chaser — this is so transparently the Strictly to Downton’s X Factor — but this is the wrong way to go. Any dramatic interpretation of the English class system should be full of repression, unvoiced emotions, endless knowing looks. By turning it into a war flick, the little picture is lost. And jokey lines about carrots not having juice seem incongruous.”
Matt Rudd, Sunday Times
HOMELAND, C4
“[It] kept pushing forward, and quietly getting a better angle on your windpipe — before, suddenly, going right for your jugular, ten minutes before the end.”
Caitlin Moran, The Times
You might object that espionage thrillers with equal irresponsibility exploit serious political themes and that Homeland makes comparable entertainment out of terrorism…. But, in any case, just as a narrative, Homeland works. The climax of last night’s episode was chilling.”
Andrew Billen, The Times
“This show makes you realise that the storyteller’s art is not to dissimilar to that of the CIA spook, all smoke, mirrors and confusion.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express
“It’s a shame. There are complex characters here. The dialogue is mostly real and only very occasionally channel-switchingly dire. But it doesn’t matter how well it’s put together: it’s so thrilling, it’s dull.”
Matt Rudd, Sunday Times
“The idea that the BBC’s lawyers would allow a presenter to any degree of danger in the conduct of his job is…well it’s a croc.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express
I’M IN A BOY BAND! BBC2
“Making an hour-long programme that features only statements of the obvious, flaccid truisms and outright nonsense is almost an achievement, particularly if you actually have some quite interesting contributors in it. But if Alexis Petridis or Ronan Keating or Pete Waterman ever did say anything interesting about the business of confecting pop bestsellers someone had carefully made sure it didn’t make it into the final film.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent
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