The Iris Affair; Mr Scorsese

“The Iris Affair is a rollicking yarn from Neil Cross, the creator of Luther, stylishly and propulsively directed by Terry McDonough and Sarah O’Gorman. Cross’s script is drily witty while avoiding any hint of the cynicism that would spell death for the endeavour. You’ve got to go at this stuff with your whole heart or it doesn’t work at all.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Don’t expect to take it seriously because it is pretty much mad, but you can enjoy the dialogue and the gorgeous Italian and Sardinian backdrops, which contrast with the very ungorgeous violence and grey interior scenes of a James Bondish bunker in Slovenia. Should you watch it? Well, it’s daft and needlessly complicated, little in the plot would stand up to scrutiny and it features a supervillain who is so comically evil that I quite liked him. But the dialogue is clever, and it’s a lovely, nuanced turn from Tom Hollander as someone who seems like a total baddie but who has hidden depths of humanity.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“A film with a Bond franchise budget might have been able to do this stuff justice, but here we’re operating with the production values of a mid-range car advert and it all feels a bit lame. This is the second conspiracy thriller this year featuring an antisocial maths genius who holds the key to something world-changing. The other one, Prime Target, was more expensive but equally silly.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Written by Neil Cross, who also created Luther, The Iris Affair is a homage to the Hollywood genre of pursuit films, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. That sort of film is always set against a backdrop of stunning landscapes and gorgeous cities, and The Iris Affair doesn’t disappoint.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The show is set mainly on Sardinia, and the sun-soaked vistas are as gorgeous as the storyline is fantastical – a mash-up of Bond, Killing Eve and Alex Garland’s dystopian techno-thrillers Devs and Ex Machina. That makes it sound better than it actually is, but The Iris Affair has enough propulsion to keep you watching.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“If it isn’t entirely successful, it’s because five hours is nowhere near enough time to do justice to the man’s multitudes. Despite its extended runtime, something about Mr Scorsese still feels frustratingly slight. Perhaps it’s that the series noticeably loses density as his career wears on. The first few episodes are rich and packed with information, but we’re still stuck in the 1990s by the end of the fourth episode. In other words, the definitive Martin Scorsese documentary remains unmade. But if you have a love of film and five spare hours, you could do much worse.”
Stuart Heritage, The Guardian

“Oh what joy! In an era when the documentary sector has been colonised by nonsense celebrity guff and branded Netflix piffle along comes Rebecca Miller with this rich, serious and consistently rewarding profile of the modern Hollywood icon Martin Scorsese. It’s a captivating and careful study of an Oscar-winning 82-year-old auteur that emerges from a plethora of ideas and intimate testimonies, most notably Scorsese’s own, yet is always balanced by fundamental concepts of light and shade.”
Kevin Maher, The Times

“A five-hour documentary series about director Martin Scorsese runs the obvious risk of being everything a Scorsese movie is not: reverential, indulgent and direly in need of a few extra Rolling Stones songs. But Mr Scorsese’s director, Rebecca Miller, skilfully sidesteps these pitfalls by essentially getting out of the way and letting Scorsese and his films speak for themselves. The result is a gripping hagiography that doesn’t so much proclaim Scorsese a genius as it lets us bask in his brilliance.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph