13 May '11

“Though the narrator seemed, in tone at least, to side with the parents. His encounters with Southall became progressively more combative as the 80 minutes wore on. It’s not clear – and I wish it had been more expressly asked – whether Southall still believes all of the women (even those like Davis, whose case was dismissed by the authorities) were guilty of harming their children, or whether he concedes that he might, occasionally, have got it wrong.”
Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent

“Leo Regan’s latest film was unusual in giving equal airtime to both parties and it avoided reaching any definite conclusions. Mainly because there were none to be reached. My own gut feeling was that not all of the parents could possibly have done what Southall claimed, but equally it did not seem credible that Southall could have been such a danger as some thought.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Perhaps the real trick was to appreciate all the subtler things this film managed to do rather than focus on the one big thing it couldn’t. It gave a lot of hurt, angry people a voice.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“Unlike last week – I could actually understand it. All the way through, not just at the end. We had a bit of a head start, of course, what with having met all the characters themselves. Still, it was a novel feeling.”
Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent

“I wish that Hugo Blick would stop, by his portentous dialogue and encouragement of show acting, telling us how significant his noir thriller is.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“It is not the kind of thing I would choose to watch every night, but the film was a genuinely moving, unsentimental portrait of an intimate moment and, compared with the daily dose of violent death we get on the news, it did more to make death seem less scary than any theologian has ever done.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“The point of Michael Mosley’s series is to make us marvel at the enterprise of the human body as a survival machine.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“I just can’t help loving his excitement and egomania. I know he’s intended to seem self-deprecating in a rather ironic “I’m a poncey actor” way with his constant attention-seeking behaviour, but the reason the show is such good entertainment is that you sense he really does believe the world is a far better place for everyone when he is at its epicentre. And Extreme Fishing does rather prove him right.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“It’s a crafty spin on a club act. We enjoy mind-alteringly good tricks from host Philp Escoffey twinned with the psychological confusion of the contestants, who can see him pulling these stunts time after time but know not all of them can be possible.”
Matt Baylis, The Express