12 Aug '11

“Looking at the twinkling lights and sweeping coast, you do just want to nod right off. Unfortunately, it’s an instruction Halls seemed to have taken to heart. For the next 50 minutes, to the soporific soundtrack of something that wasn’t Titanic’s but may as well been given the proliferation of pan pipes to be heard, we got observations on multi-coloured shop fronts, unsuccessful hunts for whale carcasses and anecdotes from Halls’s childhood.”
Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent

“Whenever there’s a whale or a basking shark rotting on the shoreline, it’s Halls’ job to go along and poke about with a stick.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“After Scotland, Ireland looks a little tame. But like the area, Halls’ programme is dangerously seductive.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“As a sales pitch for the Irish tourist board the programme works perfectly, but as entertainment it falls a long way short because watching other people go on holiday wears thin very quickly, no matter how jolly they are.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Laverne Antrobus reviewing Horizon footage from the past six decades as society bounced from one generational fad to the next. There was the rigour of the 1950s, the attachment theory of the 1960s, the rise in research surrounding autism and shaken-baby syndrome.”
Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent

“A crocodile in my garden would terrify me. A crocodile on the telly would bore me. But crocodile people, inspired by and devoted to one of the most unlovely beasts on Earth, are fascinating.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“I remain in love: the fishy smell in the air, the whisper of corruption and collusion.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“What the point of the programme was meant to be and what most of it had to do with Margaret More was anyone’s guess.”
John Crace, The Guardian