“It is very entertaining. Ludicrous but moreish”
“Too soon? Holly Willoughby might think so. Channel 5 loves a topical thriller, but its celebrity stalker drama Number One Fan looms dangerously close to the line between inspiration and intrusion. It’s less than two years since security guard Gavin Plumb was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 16 years, for plotting to kidnap, rape and murder the former This Morning presenter. Badly shaken, Miss Willoughby quit the magazine show and has been seen on screen only rarely since then. In this four-part nightly potboiler, Jill Halfpenny plays a character who is so much a blend of Holly and her former ITV colleague Lorraine Kelly, it’s verging on outright satire.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“Number One Fan (5) is a steaming potboiler about a smiley, saccharine daytime TV presenter with a seemingly perfect life who hosts a show rather like ITV’s This Morning and gets targeted by an unhinged stalker. So you may be thinking: “Hold on. Wasn’t there an actual smiley daytime TV presenter on the real life This Morning who got targeted by a monstrous, unhinged stalker?” And you would be right. A former security guard was jailed for life two years ago for a truly repulsive and terrifying plot to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby. So you may feel Number One Fan is tiptoeing into the arena of “poor taste”. But this drama is a mad potpourri of many influences. As the series progresses, every night this week, you may also detect shades of The Jeremy Kyle Show and a whiff of Fatal Attraction. With all the subtlety of a lump hammer, it skewers the fakery of TV types and is so completely batshit crazy I can’t decide whether it’s a cleverly subversive send-up or complete and utter ham. It’s probably more the latter but I cannot lie to you — it is very entertaining. Ludicrous but moreish.”
Carol Midgley, The Times
“This is not a wildly sophisticated drama – it lives or dies by its plot and the fun you have on the rollercoaster – so I want to stay as clear of spoilers as I can. If you have watched four-part weeknight thrillers before, I’m going to guess it won’t ruin the suspense too much if I say that Donna’s presence in the car park before the mugging was not by chance (“Drop the act, I know it’s you, you creepy cow”), and that she has a deeper, darker motivation behind her stalkery business than acquiring freebie jackets and exfoliating scrubs, and wants revenge for greater sins. If I were a betting woman, I’d place quite a large sum on the truffle-sender – of whom we get occasional glimpses, generally involving him shouting at the Lucy Live show or throwing darts at a picture of Lucy’s face – being involved with it, too.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian
“There is no shortage of programmes this month marking Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday, but Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure (BBC One), is the best. This is a simple history of the landmark 1979 series, told by the people who made it. The programme doesn’t fawn over Attenborough, but celebrates him, and gives equal time to his colleagues in the Natural History Unit. More than anything, it’s a wonderful exercise in nostalgia. We’re whisked back to a time where Attenborough was a dashing BBC executive in danger of being offered the director-general job. He couldn’t think of anything worse. He wanted to work in natural history, and in 1976 he was granted the opportunity. “What about a series about the evolution of animals?” he suggested. And that, he said, “was the turning point in my life, really”.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph
“Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure (BBC1) is, predictably, wonderful television because it delivers reminders of all the breathtaking and now famous animal money shots while also filling us in on the human drama happening behind the scenes. Of which there was plenty. More than once I thought that Attenborough must have had a charmed life in managing to escape potential danger unscathed. I don’t just mean the moment when a female gorilla in Rwanda put her hand on his head, twisted it round and stuck a finger in his mouth making one of his team think: “Oh God, his head’s going to come off and we haven’t finished the series yet.””
Carol Midgley, The Times
“The story of how the camera team missed most of the 15-minute encounter, and how the Rwandan army almost confiscated what footage remained, has been told many times. But it was put into the context of his whole life, in Making Life On Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure. Sitting at a desk and reading from his diaries, Sir David looks and sounds remarkably well for a chap just a fortnight away from his centenary. But as generous excerpts from the 1979 series reminded us, he always did look young for his age - 52 at the time, but more like a man in his 30s, even on that day in the Grand Canyon when he was suffering from an unfortunate allergy to mule hide, which made his eyes blow up like puffer fish.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“You might worry that a retrospective film about Life on Earth could be an hour of solemn awe and hushed reverence. What you actually get from Making Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure is a relentlessly entertaining cavalcade of top-drawer anecdotes, more like the sort of gossipy celebration that might commemorate the making of Jaws or Star Wars. Victoria Bobin’s rollicking film is the story of a giant pop-culture moment, a gang of mates remembering how they sensed conditions were right to create a blockbuster masterpiece – if they were willing to flirt with failure and even death to get there.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian
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