The Rings of Power; Manhood; Stacey & Joe: In Too Deep; David Walliams: Power and Silence

“The best and perhaps the only way to watch series three of Amazon Prime Video’s billion-dollar Lord of the Rings spin-off, The Rings of Power, is to pretend it has nothing whatsoever to do with JRR Tolkien. Enjoyed as bingeable nonsense – Jeff Bezos’s lab-grown version of lovable Eighties dross such as Krull or Hawk the Slayer – this riotously silly prequel to The Lord of the Rings goes down a treat. The dialogue is ripe, the special effects passable, the prosthetic elf ears and dwarf beards merrily fake-looking. Were David Bowie to jump out of a wardrobe wearing his statement mullet and codpiece from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, nobody would blink. The show exists in a place of sublime tackiness. Leave your brain at the portcullis and it’s great fun.”
Ed Power, Telegraph

“For all its finely wrought art direction and respect for JRR Tolkien’s elaborate high-fantasy taxonomy, this no-expense-spared expansion of the mythos – set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before Bilbo Baggins first went walkabout – is in danger of going down in our own historical annals as simply a bit dull. Never mind more rings, it desperately needs some rizz.”
Graeme Virtue, The Guardian

“In Bill Moore’s Dallas clinic, every man who drops his pants and lies on the treatment table, braced for the needle, has come looking for something without being sure what it is. As far as their physical selves are concerned, they know exactly what they want, and they are handing over thousands of bucks to pay for it: they all crave a thicker penis. Whether this will mend their broken self-esteem, though, is not clear. Daniel Lombroso’s documentary about Moore and his patients doesn’t know precisely what it wants either, as it floats between sad stories of modern male self-image that never merge into a singular takeaway argument. Is it about looksmaxxing and the manosphere? At least one participant has picked up questionable ideas from big, bad podcasts, so yes. But the film is also interested in pornography’s flooding of male brains with extreme imagery, and how unrealistic beauty goals for women can make insecure men blame their ills on their own imperfect appearances. It’s concerned with shame, trauma and homophobia too.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“The film itself seemed caught between observation and reaction. Documentarians like Louis Theroux, in his excellent Inside the Manosphere earlier this year, identified similar sources of male dysfunction and self-loathing (such as the raft of insidious podcasts that men seem to be listening to while they vape and fume), but Theroux set out to confront those who were profiting from the never-ending search for a new you. Manhood was less adversarial, but more doleful. However bad things may be, this (insert aubergine emoji with syringe and warning sign) is surely not the answer.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“Everything, in short, is much as it was as the third series of the reality show, Stacey & Joe (this time subtitled In Too Deep), about the nation’s noisiest celebrity couple, begins. Everything is still very loud. Well, Joe is still very loud and thus everyone else still has to strain to be heard over him. Except the cockerel, to whom it comes quite naturally. Joe is afeard of the cockerel. That is because the cockerel clearly hates him. If there ever came a time that the nation was required to choose sides in their war, I would side firmly with the fowl.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Stacey Solomon is furious. Wherever she goes, paparazzi with long lenses dog her steps, snatching photos. It’s invasive. It’s inconsiderate. It’s an outrage, frankly. ‘I have a reasonable expectation to privacy, for sure,’ she fumes at one snapper, who had the temerity to point a camera at her when she was enjoying a walk in a field of tulips with just a minimal film crew.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It’s one thing to read a litany of nauseating allegations about a celebrity, but hearing about them from the accusers on TV is somehow even more sickening. ITN’s documentary investigation David Walliams: Power and Silence, released on YouTube hours ahead of its broadcast on ITV, added details and deepened the context, industry and cultural, around the shocking allegations, ones that Walliams denies. It was inevitably a deeply disturbing report.”
James Jackson, The Times