The Experiment; Slow Horses; Ellie & Natasia

“Would you recognise cruelty if it was disguised as care? Would you be able to sniff out the sinister bullshit in a slick, corporate video about a “bold new concept” in supported disabled living and detect that it was actually just locking disabled people away in institutions to save money? Of course you would! At least we’d like to think we would. But The Experiment (Channel 4) put it to the test and, spoiler alert, not everyone “passed”. The documentary was an elaborate trick, or, to use its term, a “provocative experiment”. (It was a clever and timely idea but it did overexplain its premise.)”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The Experiment is designed to test the theory that modern Britain is dangerously dehumanising disabled people. It draws a stark parallel with the trajectory of Nazi Germany and intends to offer a warning about our susceptibility to eugenicist rhetoric. But, to do that, it engages in quite a tawdry display of tricking the public, setting them up to look stupid or heartless, but not interrogating the belief systems or experiences that brought them there. Fraser says that they are staging the experiment to see if the “British public can be persuaded that disabled people should be segregated”, but the deployment of such persuasion feels rather beside the point. Sure, some people will buy into Nazi talking points, or fail to even notice them, but what does that really tell us about the insidious reality of the present day? Should we be worrying, so literally, about repeating the specific mistakes of the past, when the struggles of the present moment feel so urgent?”
Nick Hilton, Independent

“I have never had to pause a programme halfway through before to catch my breath. That is until The Experiment – Channel 4’s highly controversial social exercise designed to find out “how susceptible the British public are” to Nazi ideology about disabled people. This is a show so disturbing, timely and surreal that within 90 seconds of viewing it alone, I am looking around for confirmation from an empty room that any of this is happening.”
Frances Ryan, The Guardian

“Reality TV chooses its cast and it doesn’t show its working. There is always an edit, always an underlying purpose. This is not to say that Britain doesn’t have a problem in its attitudes to disabled people, only that a TV stunt is not the way to prove that it does. So overall, The Experiment offered three conclusions, two of them making it worth the watch: one is that media persuasion and malign influence need to be questioned at every step. Two is that history always rhymes. And three is that you should always beware the TV “experiment”.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“The fun of Slow Horses is that it pretends to be an anti-spy story, while simultaneously satisfying all our cravings for a traditional espionage adventure. This climactic episode delivered everything: a delicious double cross, Russian thugs, a svelte supervillainess and a bloody shootout at a safe house. But it also subverted all the cliches.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The sixth series of Slow Horses (Apple TV) has delivered, to borrow from Mick Jagger’s fabulously drawling title song, another strange game. But this year’s arc has been clean, taut and hugely satisfying too. With the horses being hunted throughout the series, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) compromised after accepting a dodgy donation and using it for an unauthorised hit on a Russian agent, and a pair of lethal assassins (and Hugo Weaving’s wicked Frank Harkness) on their tail, the body count has been high — even by the standards of a show that is not exactly sentimental when it comes to killing off much loved characters.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“For a while there, it looked as if Slow Horses (Apple TV) might have gone off the boil. The sixth series sometimes felt disjointed. The Right-wing news boss was a rubbish character. The Russian assassins had the staying power of cyborgs. And who picks a safe house with no curtains and more floor-to-ceiling windows than an episode of Grand Designs? But in the end it came together magnificently. After five episodes in which they were never in the same place, the Slough House squad was reunited for a last stand on a Suffolk beach. Even Moira (Joanna Scanlan), a woman born to do a desk job, was prepared to go down fighting.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“I imagine that trying to write and perform a successful sketch show is one of the hardest things a comedy duo can pull off. But discovering you are both pregnant while doing so and having to finish and record it quickly before you give birth must create another level of pressure and urgency altogether. But if so, it doesn’t show in the new series of Ellie & Natasia (BBC2), starring Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou, which is another little piece of joy. In fact both use their synchronised pregnancies to comic effect, particularly in my favourite of their creations, Internet Nails, which happily has made the transition from series one in 2022. (White reportedly went into labour halfway through the edit.)”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The series also manages to pack in a ridiculous surfeit of British comedy talents, from Jamie Demetriou to Steve Coogan, Katy Wix to Asim Chaudhry, Kiell Smith-Bynoe to Vicki Pepperdine. But, of course, its brightest lights are White and Demetriou. “Pregnant and doing a sketch show? Does that make it funnier?” asks Demetriou in one of the transition scenes where the two women natter to each other. Not necessarily, but I could easily watch another 10 episodes.”
Hannah J Davies, The Guardian