This City Is Ours; Adultery; One Born Every Minute

“This City Is Ours, aka “the Scouse Sopranos”, hadn’t even kicked off its second series before it was announced that the BBC had commissioned a third. The BBC is clearly confident it can deliver good ratings but this also means that it can afford to take its time plot-wise. Which the first episode of series two did. Don’t be fooled, though, by the relatively low-key start. I loved the first series and have already gobbled up all eight episodes of the new one (all are on iPlayer). It soon becomes a twisty white-knuckle ride in which the excellent Banksey (Mike Noble) gets a prominent storyline (this is very good news), main characters are sacrificed and another actor called Shaun has been brought in to fill the Sean Bean-shaped hole left last series when Bean’s drugs lord character Ronnie was murdered by his own right-hand man, Michael (James Nelson Joyce).”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The acting is, as always, terrific. Not least from Shaun “Endeavour” Evans as newcomer Ozzie Thompson, a sublimely chilly old lag who keeps asking questions about Ronnie while drifting around the Phelans like the Ghost of Bastards Past. And dear God, the tension. There’s a scene in a car wash that is so exquisitely palpitation-inducing it took me three attempts to get through the whole thing, and that was with a packet of digestives. (Frankly, the idea of approaching any of this without sufficient carbohydrates doesn’t bear thinking about.) This City is Ours is not The Gentlemen, with its preening toffs and their fists of dry-cured Ibérico ham. Nor is it MobLand with its showboating Oirish grifters. Nobody swaggers around Stephen Butchard’s mob saga in jeggings, or is hurled in slow-motion through a pub thick with whooping cockneys in flat caps. These tortured, blouson-wearing Liverpudlians are not, by any stretch of the imagination, “cool”. They are misguided dolts, mawkish bruisers or ambitious berks so flummoxed by the demands of everyday life that their chances of sustained gangland domination seem … slim.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian

“Julie Graham, as Elaine, was missing dead husband Ronnie (Sean Bean) so much that she drank red wine until she could see his ghost sitting at the kitchen counter. Grief-stricken Cheryl (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) was also knocking back the claret, though she’d admittedly had a tough day – finding her dead husband’s rotting corpse in a body bag in the Spanish hinterland, playing Ave Maria on her phone over his shallow grave, and then getting kidnapped by the Colombian drug lord’s brother. All this grimness became oppressive, until the drama began to feel as entertaining as a migraine. But the pressure found a release when Banksey and his mate went to collect a drugs shipment at a carwash. As his car was smothered in foam, it seemed to close in on him like a coffin. When the jet hoses hit the windscreen, he and I both jumped out of our skins.”
Christoper Stevens, Daily Mail

“The first series of This City Is Ours was caught up in a debate about television’s eagerness to caricature Liverpool as a hotbed of criminality. It was hardly alone: see also The Responder, The Cage and Netflix’s Legends. Those complaints won’t be entirely assuaged by series two, which is very much in the recent tradition of Merseyside noir. But it is ultimately hard to imagine anyone confusing this cartoonish romp with the real Liverpool. This City Is Ours exists in a world of pure gangster movie cliché. How much of this is on purpose is hard to say, but the more outrageous it gets, the more watchable it becomes. Buckle up for a pulpy thrill-ride, brimming with violence and a plot that careers like an out-of-control bulldozer.”
Ed Power, Telegraph

“Beth (Romola Garai) and Tom (Dominic Cooper) are the two main players in a drama called Adultery (ITV1), so it’s hardly a spoiler to tell you that they have an affair. Indeed, from the moment Beth, an addled mum in a permanent rush with a useless husband and two teenage boys in tow, knocks Tom off his bike… from the moment they exchange a smouldering you-nearly-killed-me god that’s so hot – glance, Adultery is headed inexorably to the bedroom. What follows is an absorbing – if at times lopsided – mixture of soap and sociology. Sometimes it’s Jilly Cooper, others it’s Harold Pinter.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“Adultery, in short, is a clattering bag of cliches delivered by ciphers, despite a host of good actors giving it everything they can. Everywhere you look there are unconvincing people doing unconvincing things. Yes, you think, Dave may well be a dickhead, but would he really take one look at his ex-wife lying in her coffin in the chapel of rest and say “I’ve been inside that body” to Beth? No. Or, if you were about to swim in an isolated lake in the Lake District on a dirty weekend away, would you do it in a swimming costume and trunks? No. Or, if you were a doctor who’d injured your wrist would you not be able to fashion a sling that actually supports it? Yes. Or, would a neurotic like Hannah, who demands a four-way action plan be forged among the parents when Jess is told off for imitating Ollie by cheeking a teacher, really be unbothered about finding out they take edibles together? No.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“After an eight-year hiatus, Channel 4’s beloved One Born Every Minute is back. Following three women through their births – spanning first and fourth babies, slow-moving labours and frighteningly fast deliveries – I’m delighted to report that the new series’ first episode is as life-affirming as ever. What’s more, having recently had a baby myself, I now recognise the show for the feminist tour de force it always was in telling those stories in the first place.”
Emily Watkins, The i