TV Critics: Burton and Taylor; Take on the Twisters

“As a story about old lovers and colleagues working together for one last time, Burton & Taylor is affecting and well observed. As a portrayal of the two stars, it is off the mark. It fails to capture the recklessness that defined its subjects’ relationship. From their drinking to their shopping, from their rows to their reconciliations, everything about the real-life Burton and Taylor was on an epic scale. It’s this sense of heroic excess that Richard Laxton’s well crafted but restrained drama fails to capture.”
Geoffrey McNab, The Independent

“I know it’s about a time after Taylor and Burton’s two marriages, she’s 50, he’s 57 and will be dead the following year (Private Lives was their final encounter); but I could have done with less petty luvviness, and more proper fighting, more boozing, more jokes, more passion. It’s well-written certainly, but maybe a touch under-written: it never ignites and goes bang.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Fine actors that they are, West and Bonham Carter did it brilliantly, conveying the toxic, almost adolescent obsession of these performers at the same time as displaying their inner vulnerabilities.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“The psychodrama it depicted was a compelling one. But in place of passion, it gave us co-dependency, revenge strategies and an addictive relationship; plus a vomiting, dyspeptic Burton and a needy, prescription-pill-popping Taylor. Glamorous, it wasn’t.”
Chris Harvey, The Telegraph

“The Beeb’s drama controller Ben Stephenson has said he wanted the channel’s original drama output to end with ‘something iconic’. Mission accomplished.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“I don’t understand the format at all. I still have no idea who, or what, the twisters are.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian