TV Critics: Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome; Normal For Norfolk; Caravanner of the Year; Plebs

“Ignore the macho and American-sounding title: Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit is a thoughtful and resolutely British series that, like its predecessors, deserves to draw in viewers by the million.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“Beard was in full-throttle mode as, soon accelerating out of the sylvan glade in which she told us the Romulus and Remus fairy tale, she donned a Roman helmet, flew over battle sites and travelled to the bottom of the Med to seek the remains of a sunken warship. An hour took us from R&R’s wolf mum to Augustus. It was a very old story but her telling felt fresh.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Her sense of happy enjoyment carries the show along, so that we hear all the references to Carthage and Pompey the Great and Vercingetorix without the uncomfortable feeling of being 11 years old again and stuck in a classroom. She also has a knack for drawing out parallels between ancient history and current headlines.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Her unrelenting enthusiasm for her subject and ability to find the universal in the intimate moments of everyday life and death allow her to traverse the millennia with ease, and give us in the 21st century a tangible sense not only of how Romans lived, but how they thought and felt.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit spent a lot of time on the myths of the classical world, the truth or otherwise being less important than what they told us about the people who cherished them.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“The breathy, insinuating voiceover and the wacky woodwind music created an impression 99.9 per cent at odds with what’s going on on the screen. All of this activity was presented as if it was somehow trousersplittingly hilarious. Perhaps it would be to an audience in Guangdong. Maybe the BBC should show it over there.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Desmond MacCarthy’s endless money making schemes are entertaining, and certainly the family are not without their appeal. But there’s not a lot of insight here. For all its charm, Normal for Norfolk falls a long way short of the standard set by more sophisticated – and more relevant – depictions of the lives of the contemporary landed gentry.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“The final of Caravanner of the Year was as interminable as a rainy week stuck in a caravan with one’s own disappointing family. Watching each mobile home negotiate its way between two straw bales at a top speed of 10mph was about as exciting as it sounds.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“A sitcom set in the days of Caesar, which makes Up Pompeii look like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Screened on Mondays with a repeat on Wednesdays, it’s crude, puerile, repetitive and cheap. It is also indecently funny.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail