In the Footsteps of Killers; Britain’s Notorious Prisons; Break Point; Hunters

“The leading questions, the set-ups, the banal exchanges between Emilia Fox and criminology professor David Wilson, the sudden appearance of journalists who happen to have written reams on the subject and have done most of the heavy lifting, the dragooning of Fox because she plays something related on television – the workings of it all are so nakedly on show, the beady-eyed calculations behind everything so blatant that it is hard not to feel as a viewer that you are being lightly spat on by the entire production team. More importantly, it feels at times borderline contemptuous of the stories on show and the suffering being picked over once again.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“I’m trying to decide what irritated me most about the returning series In the Footsteps of Killers. There’s a lot, so bear with me. Was it the naff, haunting music, which gave the heinous murders of two young women the flavour of a tawdry B-movie? Was it the excruciating staged conversations between Emilia Fox and Professor David Wilson, which had all the authenticity of a Cillit Bang ad? Or the fact that Fox has no qualifications to be there, other than that she is an actress who plays a forensic pathologist in Silent Witness?”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It was a riveting watch, not least because it interviewed some of those angry rooftop prisoners who had protested against the Dickensian conditions at the Manchester prison, where there was a bucket shared between three people for a lavatory and violent, racist ‘screws’ who would abuse them while drunk.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Like a canny tennis player, Break Point turns its most obvious weakness in to a strength. By concentrating on players we don’t know – Maria Sakkari, Taylor Fritz, Matteo Berrettini – Break Point has secured extensive access and in addition, it can make nobodies somebodies, painting its character portraits on a blank canvas. The editing is so accomplished, the links between a player revealing their state of mind and then manifesting that state on court so adroit, that you’ll be rooting for people whose names you couldn’t spell within 20 minutes of having met them.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“If anything, it is at its best when it gives in to its cartoonish absurdity. As Tarantino proved with Inglourious Basterds, and Taika Waititi with Jojo Rabbit, it is possible to have stylised fun with the Nazis without glossing over the evil. The problem is that Hunters still, in its second and final series, doesn’t know whether to play things for kinetic thrills or to try to get deep and serious with its subject. It still looks the part, but the uneven character development and tonal inconsistencies that weakened the first series are still there.”
Ed Cumming, The Telegraph