East of Eden; Winter

“East of Eden, John Steinbeck’s masterpiece, has received the Netflix treatment. The story was crying out to be turned into a TV series: a handsomely-shot, sweeping family saga against the backdrop of the American West. Make this your next box set and you won’t be disappointed. Unless you’re a fan of the novel, that is, in which case you might wonder: why have they given one of literature’s true villains a sympathetic, feminist makeover?”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“East of Eden is a reverent, traditional adaptation of one of America’s great novels. Zoe Kazan captures the grandeur of the tale and wrestles, largely successfully, with its unruly structure. This is slow, poetic television-making and Netflix should be applauded for resisting the temptation to turn Cathy into a Gothic succubus. It helps East of Eden feel urgent, a story rendered from myth, and a parable for our times.”
Nick Hilton, Independent

“As a high-quality family saga, then, it’s brilliant, compelling entertainment. As an excoriation of human nature, as an examination of how helpless we are before our inborn proclivities, it perhaps cannot help but lack the heft it needs.”
Lucy Mangan, THe Guardian

“As Adam, Christopher Abbott delivers on the stillness and kindly naivety while Mike Faist captures all the foxlike smarts and country boy energy of his brother, Charles. He knows a creature who will, as he puts it, tear his brother to pieces, but that doesn’t stop him sleeping with Cathy when she presents the opportunity. There’s also a nice turn from Tracy Letts as their mendacious, abusive, financially corrupt father, Cyrus. As a viewing spectacle it is immersive and atmospheric, beautifully paced (it knows when to slow down), gorgeously shot and lit. A feast for the eyes, just overegged on the sexual politics. And not a great deal of fun either.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Dr Ethan Winter, played by Richard Armitage, is the latest in a long line of eccentric mortuary medics, from Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta (recently played by Nicole Kidman) to Endeavour’s creepy Dr DeBryn and the loopy Dr Fleur Perkins in Midsomer Murders. But Winter takes eccentricity to a whole new plane – specifically, the spirit plane. He talks to his cadavers, introducing himself before beginning to dissect them, and inviting them to explain how they died. ‘Anything else you want to tell me?’ he asked one murder victim as he sewed her insides back up.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The script may be a thing of string and glue but the dead fiancee stuff is gripping and Winter’s production values are uncommonly high; the direction, soundtrack and lighting (so many burnished brass sconces!) conspiring to paint Bristol as a glowering storm cloud of polo-necked pain and longing. Based on long-running French thriller Balthazar, the aesthetic here shares a similar, ’ow you say, narked grandeur. The upshot? It’s a potboiler in a belted trenchcoat. Silent Witness saying “bof” while eating an onion. And yet even the many, many ridiculous bits work, folded as they are into a soufflé that is as ferociously watchable as it is unnecessarily expensive.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian

“There are serious crime dramas and then there is Winter (ITV1), which wants to be serious but is unintentionally hilarious. At its heart is Richard Armitage as Dr Ethan Winter, a brooding forensic pathologist in chunky knitwear. An autopsy with Winter is as close as a corpse can get to a luxury spa experience: mood lighting, background music and Winter whispering sweet nothings about how he’s going to catch the killer. You don’t get that on Silent Witness. It’s very silly. I enjoyed it.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“As a thriller, it is painfully short on thrills. Both Armitage and Scholey play their characters as cadaverously cold ciphers, and it leaves the central dynamic desperate for an injection of energy. As a result, the show feels lifeless, ready to be slid back into a drawer at the morgue for disappointing telly.”
Nick Hilton, Independent