Dept Q; The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone

“Dept Q may sound generic, being made by Netflix, but it’s slicker, more expensively done, more visually arresting than your average detective drama (even as it is stretched over a couple of episodes too many). It’s like Grace but bigger, better. Scottish in all the best sardonic ways.”
James Jackson, The Times

“Dept. Q is very well done. Matthew Goode, more often seen as a buttoned-up toff, plays wonderfully well against type as an unbuttoned scruff. His team of misfits are well cast and well-used, with Alexej Manvelov as Akram Malik particularly impressive. Writer Scott Frank marshals the whole thing like a maestro.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“A cold case missing persons investigation, set in the dingy basement of an Edinburgh police station and lead by a miserable, troubled lead detective? Heard it all before… yet, it remains one of the best crime dramas the streamer has ever produced. It’s confident in its simplicity, assuredly propelling you towards a heart-thumping finale.”
Emily Baker, The i

“It is all fantastically well, and rigorously, done. The pacing has a leisurely confidence that some may find a touch slow, but allows for a character-first approach, creating a richness that amply rewards initial patience.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone is a gripping two-part documentary, which first examines how Mone rose to fame and entered the heart of the political establishment, before moving on to look at her more recent nosedive into scandal and a different sort of notoriety.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“Mone would probably have loved the first 30 minutes telling the story of the driven, entrepreneurial underdog from Glasgow who left school with no qualifications yet made her name in the world of bras. But the rest of this peppy, well-constructed two-parter spanning two hours will be less comfortable viewing.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Depending on your point of view, The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone was either delicious schadenfreude or a vicious character assassination. Erica Jenkin’s two-part documentary series was clear on where it fell on the lingerie entrepreneur turned Conservative peer – that Baroness Mone of Mayfair is a chancer, a Wonderbra Walter Mitty, a vainglorious cad whose success and morality is like the product that made her famous, all front. Yet Mone’s supporters – and following the PPE scandal there can’t be too many of those left – would suggest that the programme exaggerates its own assets.”
Chris Bennion, The Telegraph

“The two-hour programme is not an all-out hatchet job. It stops well short of accusing her of any crime (unless you count ‘lying to the media’, which Baroness Mone reminds us is perfectly fine). But she comes across as a thoroughly unpleasant woman: dishonest, bullying, self-obsessed, manipulative and lacking much talent for either business or innovation.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail