1 Feb '12

“It dealt with the collateral damage of crime – in this case, the women left outside when men end up in jail. It’s a good idea for a drama – a prison visiting room being a rich source of exotic process and a good mix of characters.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It is a bit Footballers’ Wives and a little bit Bad Girls. Except it’s not really the girls who are bad, it’s their fellas. So Bad Boys’ Girls then.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“On first impressions I’d have gladly locked up the scriptwriter and thrown away the key. However, there’s more than one meaning to “serving time” and as this drama got moving it started to clear its name.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“BBC1’s new mid-market serial, must have taken ten minutes to conceive, print out and conceive, print out and stick on the tin. But the contents did what the label said. Its uplifting theme is that female solidarity is bigger, stronger and prettier than class.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Lambert’s film began with David Cameron’s suggestion that the riots had their origin in bad parenting: “Either there was no one at home, they didn’t care much or they’d lost control,” he said at the time. But these interviews, mostly conducted with miscreant and parent sitting side by side in front of the camera, revealed that things were a good deal more complicated than that.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It made you think so hard about a well-covered subject that you changed your mind several times even while watching. Lambert’s technique was simply to plonk the parents of last summer’s rioters on a sofa with – where they were not otherwise detained – their miscreant children, and let them talk.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“And apart from tying to turn it into some kind of Titanic centenary story, they’ve done an excellent job of putting this film together so quickly. With interviews, expert testimony, recordings, those amazing infrared shots. And – crucially – with survivors’ own mobile phone footage.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian