“If you never liked Mrs Brown’s Boys to begin with, it’s unlikely that this reliable chug along the same old tracks will change your mind”

Mrs Brown's Boys

Mrs Brown’s Boys, BBC1

“Brendan O’Carroll’s cheekiness, his ability to become Mrs Brown completely, and the intimacy of being brought into a live performance provide just enough charm to propel you through the series. But if you never liked Mrs Brown’s Boys to begin with, it’s unlikely that this reliable chug along the same old tracks will change your mind.”
Rachael Healy, The i

“As ever, there are no laughs – not a single titter – to be had from sitting through the half-hour, which wearily grinds its way through the usual uninspired, unoriginal, dismal material – the kind of stuff that would shame a best man’s speech delivered by, say, Sir Gavin Williamson.”
Sean O’Grady, The Independent

“Whatever you think of the Irish sitcom Mrs Brown’s Boys, it has at least stuck to its guns. Its consistency is a marvel, in the same way the consistency of a McDonald’s cheeseburger is a marvel.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

Alone, Channel 4

“Alone has run for 10 seasons in the US, so the format is viable. But the British version has revealed its flaws, the main one being that what makes the challenge tough is what makes it less watchable: everyone is on their own.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“The winner of Channel 4’s survival series, Alone, lasted 34 days in the wilderness. Well done to him, but for the viewer it felt like 34 years. Its fatal flaw was that watching people listlessly interacting with no-one but themselves was boring.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

Jamie Cooks the Mediterranean, Channel 4

“Oliver travelled around Thessaloniki and thereabouts looking for recipe ideas and soon exhausted his larder of enthusiastic compliments. When celebrity chefs go abroad they never say, ‘It’s fine, but nothing special. I’ve had better at Pizza Express in Solihull,’ like normal folk on holiday, do they? Everything is always superlative. Oh, for a food show in which they send something back saying: ‘I wouldn’t feed that to the dog.’”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The sunshine was making Jamie frisky. He managed to say nothing about the beef cheeks, served on a long doughy flatbread, but he got the titters over his ‘crispy bottom’ as he toasted rice on an outdoor grill. And by the time he was ‘massaging plums’, at an island farm famous for its hand-softened prunes, he was getting slightly delirious.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

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