Days That Shook the BBC with David Dimbleby; Rosie Jones’s Trip Hazard

”The slightly smug air that overlies the whole programme thickens during the subsequent coverage of the journalistic strikes that followed the BBC governors’ decision not to show Real Lives…As a result of strictures laid down after the revelations about the duplicity, Days That Shook the BBC couldn’t show any of the Diana interview. Would that the same could be said of the Maitlis/Andrew encounter, simply to save the viewer the incalculable agony of watching for a second time his claims of being unable to sweat due to trauma sustained in the Falklands war.Interviewed by Dimbles about the experience, Maitlis is clearly champing at the bit to say all that she purged herself of in her recent MacTaggart Lecture, about the many flaws she perceives in the current incarnation of the BBC (and whose comments were thereafter criticised by Dimbleby himself), but limited herself to a brusque “editorial independence is always at risk”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Days That Shook the BBC is Dimbleby at his best, his unwillingness to let a stray remark go unchallenged and ability to get to the heart of the matter undiminished in his 84th year. And as he did so successfully on Question Time, he shed light on a vexed topic by removing much of the heat.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“Bashir declined to appear. Dimbleby wasn’t permitted to use clips. Everyone paid vague lip service to “the public interest” yet this was an inward-looking film. Evocative archive footage included a glimpse of a fresh-faced Jeremy Paxman in his Belfast newsroom days. But little airtime was given to those who fund it all, the licence fee payers. Challenge politicians but beware the royals – that was the moral of the story.  This was a fascinating exercise in self-flagellation. Enjoy it while it lasts, BBC bigwigs.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph

“The first half hour of David Dimbleby’s retrospective, Days That Shook The BBC, was one long howl of indignant rage at Maggie. ‘Whenever Thatcher looked at the BBC, there seemed to be trouble,’ fumed the Beeb’s erstwhile political anchor…All these years later, Dimbleby took his revenge, and showed the whole sequence — without the awareness to point out the irritability may have been an early symptom of the dementia that would end his career. Such a petty disagreement over one question was hardly a ‘day that shook the BBC’.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail  

“At times felt as though a husband was discussing the ups and downs of his long marriage while emphasising how much he always loved the old girl. Cut Dimbleby open and you’d probably find a BBC commissionaire’s hat inside. Rather beautifully, this was emblematic of the best and worst of the corporation. A place that gives succour to journalists of his undoubted calibre and pedigree yet gets one of its own to mark its homework. I would have preferred one of the (excellent) talking heads to have fronted this — the former BBC executive Michael Grade, who has crucially worked a lot in the commercial sector. Grade might not have dodged the biggest question about the BBC’s future, which is of funding: how can the licence fee apply to an age of multiple platforms, when we increasingly watch on computer screens and apps? Dimbleby was outspoken, but in exactly the way you would expect. The shaken BBC was always going to be comforted by his stirring words.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Joanna’s quip supplied the only good laugh of the hour, as Rosie and guest Guz Kahn visited Blackpool. They had their fortunes read on the seafront by Gypsy Petulengro, before embarking on a sky-dive. Guz didn’t fancy it and pulled out at the last minute. As he’d refused to ride on the rollercoaster, this can’t have come as a shock to the producers. It’s great to see a presenter with a serious physical disability tackling daredevil challenges. But the show relies too heavily on ad libs. It needs a script.” 
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail