The Walsh Sisters; The Lady

“What Keyes (an executive producer) and Preissner capture so well is the way awful problems and dramatic events weave their way into very ordinary lives. While Rachel’s forced to confront the way her addiction has hurt others, she’s also reminded that it doesn’t give her the starring role in the family. “You’re no Amy Winehouse,” they tell her. Given Keyes’s huge popularity and zippy, zeitgeist plots, it’s surprising that there haven’t been more small-screen versions in recent times. But any fans not sated by The Walsh Sisters can look forward to Netflix’s adaptation of her 2020 novel, Grown Ups, coming later this year. Adaptations, it seems, are like buses and leading men in romcoms: you wait ages, and then two come along at once.”
Helen Brown, Telegraph

“Their dramas are so heady and addictive that, when the first part ended on a shocking cliffhanger, I couldn’t help diving into the next. Like eavesdropping when you shouldn’t, it’s hard to tear yourself away.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The portraits of addiction and grief are very well done, but you find yourself wondering whether Preissner and Chadwick shouldn’t just have gone the whole hog and written something fully dramatic and interrogative of the subjects, and abandoned the comedy that Keyes blends into it with such apparent ease. On its own terms, and as a drama rather than a comedy-drama, it’s fine. And, of course, the books remain, and are as clever and comforting and funny as you remember.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian 

“Anything you want… you got it! The eerie voice of Roy Orbison, echoing as Sarah Ferguson guzzles champagne and tries on rails of designer clothes, sums up the Fergie philosophy of life. Her greed, her self-indulgent extravagance, her thoughtless contempt for anyone but herself, is skewered in The Lady – ITV’s four-part drama telling how the former Duchess of York’s personal dresser, Jane Andrews, battered and stabbed a boyfriend to death.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“This has the classy production values of The Crown (it’s made by the same production company) and comes with that show’s familiar narrative structure, where paired storylines comment on and contrast the other. Andrews and Ferguson were propelled to higher stations by dint of personality and neither fitted in; both were victims of their passions and appetites. [Natalie] Dormer, who has said she is donating her acting fee for the drama to childhood abuse charities, ably captures Ferguson’s fey fecklessness. She is a tornado of red hair who, while not necessarily unkind, is unthinking, especially when she lets Andrews go for seemingly flirting with one of her alleged lovers. Her cack-handed manner even extends to the inelegant way she walks or sits on chairs.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“The drama is produced by Left Bank, which also made The Crown, but there are no other royals on show, save for a hazy shot of the Princess of Wales glimpsed through a doorway. In terms of portraying palace life, The Lady is to The Crown what those ropey seaside wax museums are to Madame Tussauds. “Gillian finally bagged a viscount. We’re taking her out for champers to celebrate!” is a line given to a member of the royal household. We could also do without the Pretty Woman-style montage in which Ferguson tries on different outfits. Ultimately, this is a true crime story done the ITV way: propulsive, bingeable, entertaining, not too deep. Just remember that there is a victim in this story, and it’s not Jane Andrews.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“Ultimately, for all its regal bells and kazoos, its creating-and-merging-stuff-for-fancy-dramatic-purposes, The Lady is just another TV series that turns a horribly bleak and upsetting real-life crime into entertainment. And surely, surely, we’ve had enough of those?”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian