“Hard to follow and repetitive, TikTok: Murder Gone Viral delivered the bare minimum on every front”
“Hard to follow and repetitive, TikTok: Murder Gone Viral delivered the bare minimum on every front. Smack bang in the show’s target audience, I should have been rapt – unfortunately, I was left bored and confused. In its own way, considering the subject matter, that is quite a feat.”
Emily Watkins, The i
“It puts so much emphasis on the role of TikTok for the 2022 murders of Saqib Hussain and Hashim Ijazuddin that it oversimplifies a complex tragedy. We find out very little about the pair beyond the fact that they do cringey dances on TikTok and that Mahek is a staggeringly poor liar who goes into her police interviews with an alibi so idiotic she may as well have #GUILTYAF written across her forehead.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian
“There were touching tributes to the dead men from fathers and brothers, though nothing was heard from any women in their families. Aside from this, the documentary had no insights to offer — just an inventory of the facts from detectives, as though they were giving evidence in court, and a chilling glimpse of Mahek’s police interview.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
Black Cake, Disney+
“Though it tackles heavy themes around race, grief and gender, Black Cake is still one of the most visually stunning shows in recent memory. The story takes its time and the eight hour-long episodes require patience and focus, but the payoff is worth it. Black Cake is a highly intelligent and skilfully crafted piece that deserves to be slowly and thoughtfully savoured.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian
“Spanning six decades while hopping back and forth across the Atlantic, Black Cake strives to be a sweeping multi-generational epic but ends up as a supersized soap. The sort of indulgently sentimental heartstring-tugger which Americans might lap up but us cynical Britons tend to balk at.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph
“Madeleine Gavin’s feature documentary showed the reality of life under the dictator Kim Jong-un as even more hellish than you imagined. Their escape footage, filmed on the family’s phones, gave a sense of fear that was unsettlingly contagious, and made you think how smartphones now inform this kind of documentary.”
James Jackson, The Times
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