Archie; One Night

“Isaacs managed to show Grant’s flaws while never for a moment making him unlikeable. He was simply a man who had never known love so wasn’t sure how to show it. Where the writer Jeff Pope’s series was less successful was in its depiction of Hollywood, with an unconvincing Doris Day and Grace Kelly, and sets that looked a tad artificial.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The main weakness is the drama’s attempts to recreate Hollywood on an ITV budget. No amount of bright sunshine can convince us that we’re really looking at California; the American accents are ropey, and walk-on roles for Mae West, George Burns and others smack of seaside waxworks. This all adds a level of cheap artifice to a drama which, in its examination of the real man behind the persona, is trying to strip the artifice away.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Archie is at its most compelling in the recreations of Grant’s one-man show. And towards the end of the series, there’s an arresting scene during an LSD-fuelled therapy trip, in which Grant’s consciousness veers between the past and the present, his vulnerability writ large. It’s a shame that more of the programme isn’t like this, lingering in the space between wrong and right. But for the most part, Archie is hesitant in its probing and lacking in both depth and nuance, merely sketching out the most obvious beats of Grant’s story.”
Marianne Levy, The i

“With one of cinema’s most shocking backstories laid out and one of its most radical reinventions completed, the series saves itself from becoming an unwieldy epic by making a bold decision. The peak years of Grant’s career are swerved: Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story are but posters flapping past in a time-skipping montage. This is not a series about a star who cannot cope with fame; it’s about a man who cannot escape the trauma of his childhood.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Fans of Grant may struggle to recognise the actor in the haunted, faltering figure Isaac inhabits. I suppose this is the point, to a large extent. But Isaacs’ disarmingly British version of Archie never really feels real, either. This may be down to the writing – laboured jokes and trite drama mark this as a script the real Grant would have surely scrapheaped. Maybe Isaacs, making big and unexpected choices, has to shoulder some of the blame. But whatever the reason, Archie is an affair to forget.”
Louis Chilton, The Independent

“The overall effect is very much of an Australian Big Little Lies – a female-centred story played out mostly amongst affluent people in shiny clothes and shinier houses. Every emotional scene is set against a gorgeous landscape view and ugly collective and individual secrets bubbling just below the beautiful surface. But like Big Little Lies, it stays true to its characters and its story, managing to deliver something with a reasonable degree of heft as well as style, asking important questions along the way – even if it never drills too deeply for the answers.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“There’s the germ of an interesting drama here about trauma and truth, justice and healing. But whenever it looks about to emerge, it gets bogged down in repetitive flashbacks or clichéd contrivances.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph