The Testaments; André Is an Idiot; Ligas

“In some ways, it is slightly lighter and brighter than its precursor – a kind of YA reboot. Set a few years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, it focuses on the next generation of Gilead women. But it’s a YA version that still encompasses bloody punishments, rotting corpses swinging from gibbets and indoctrination and abuse – with the youth of the protagonists making it even harder to watch. The iconography remains ravishing, though. The colour palette has been expanded beyond red, white and green. Young girls of the right class are dressed in pink dresses and cloaks, the older ones (“Plums” with all the connotations of ripeness for the picking) graduate to purple (including headpieces that are mandatory but far more stylish than the blinkering bonnets the handmaids have to wear) and, then, if they are lucky enough to begin to menstruate, they move into wifely teal.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Within the strains and tensions of a teen coming-of-age story there is a compelling sense that while the girls may be victims of male-dominated religious intolerance, they can also be complicit in authoritarian cruelty. But the show feels like another teenage drama set within an all-too-familiar landscape, and even at times like a dull and tortuous all-girl Harry Potter yarn — all that pubescent struggling and another prestige show done to death. That is, until the next reboot comes around and we go through the motions all over again.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

““I’m ashamed to say that I believed in Gilead once,” Agnes tells viewers, her opening testament. “I guess it’s easier to accept a story, even a childish one, rather than accept that the people around you are monsters.” There will be some who find the daily flow of news sufficiently monstrous, who don’t need fiction to hold a mirror up to society right now. But, for others, The Testaments will serve as an impressive follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, lightening the tone, upping the pace, but retaining its careful depiction of how a society can backslide into regression and repression.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent

“The Handmaid’s Tale series had a bright beginning. But once it carried on beyond the pages of Atwood’s novel, the law of diminishing returns kicked in with a vengeance. Confused as to where it was going, it descended into sadism. At its worst, it seemed to take an almost wicked glee in its depiction of violence against women. That impulse is thankfully resisted in The Testaments. It instead opts for a homespun, almost twee, tone reminiscent of the quirky films of Wes Anderson. Aunt Lydia’s students wear colour-coded dresses – plum purple for students approaching puberty, green for those ready to be married off. A handful of scenes of bracing violence in the school are filmed with a cool, dispassionate eye.”
Ed Power, Telegraph

“André Ricciardi also wants to make others laugh all the time, but the one-time advertising creative from San Francisco is not truly sad, even when he is diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer aged 52. If anything it only makes him more joyous, ebullient, generous and, above all, honest — and thankfully for us, he recorded his final years for the camera. André Is an Idiot (BBC4) is one of the most moving and profound cancer stories you will see.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“A word of warning. If you like your crimebusters to be progressive types, with liberal ideals and a feminist slant, stay away from Ligas. It’ll only upset you. Set in Milan and starring Luca Argentero as a dapper lawyer on the skids, Ligas is about as politically correct as a Carry On film and as woke as the Reform UK party conference. Put it this way, you’re unlikely to see this Italian-language series repeated on BBC4.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail