“As with last year’s Wormwood Scrubs, there’s not much to laugh at here.” Read on for the verdict on last night’s TV.

Strangeways

Strangeways, ITV1

“There was no glamour, no pretence of rehabilitation, just a bunch of cons and prison officers trying to get through the next 24 hours with as little trouble as possible.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“As with last year’s Wormwood Scrubs, there’s not much to laugh at here, although I did enjoy the sequence in which a female prison officer vetted the mildly pornographic photographs an inmate’s girlfriend – “a very quiet girl, wouldn’t say boo to a goose” – had sent to him.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

Business Nightmares with Evan Davis, BBC2

“The message here seemed to be that if you want to get ahead in business, think big. Don’t be happy with losing just a few million. Lose hundreds of millions. Or preferably, don’t think at all.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“The Coca-Cola tale alone would have sustained the whole programme, and perhaps should have done, for there was a magaziney feel to the thing that at times felt as though too much was being squeezed in.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

Show Me the Monet, BBC2

“I know the quality threshold for early evening TV is quite low, but even so. An unknown artist who values his paintings at £100,000, a presenter who pretends to be Alan Titchmarsh, judges who try to act like Simon Cowell and Dannii Minogue and a format that looked tired after 10 minutes.”
John Crace, The Guardian

The Night Shift, BBC4

“It is set in a petrol station, and if you come from Reykjavik it’s probably very funny indeed. But I don’t. Incidentally, it took me five minutes to work out that it was an import, there being so many impenetrable foreign languages behind the tills of our petrol stations these days that at first I assumed it was set in Woking.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

Gordon’s Great Escape, Channel 4

“It was all jolly life-affirming stuff and all the more so for taking place in a country that so recently had the heart ripped out it through internal conflict. Luckily, it seems to be growing a new heart.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

Made in Chelsea, E4

“If you enjoy watching thick rich people getting drunk and making fools of themselves, then you’ll love this.”
Sarah Vine, The Times

The Hotel Inspector, Channel 5

“This week’s challenge was a Lake District bed and breakfast proprietor who came across as furious about how his life had turned out and was determined to wreak his revenge on the holidaying public.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

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