15 Nov '10

It’s hard to know where the real Garrow ends and the modern politically-correct touching-up process begins…The real Garrow was the son of a vicar, a deeply moral sort and unlikely to spend so much time flirting openly in court with the wife of a baronet.
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

William Garrow is my new hero. If the law was an ass (and it certainly was), then he whupped it, big time. The only pity is that, just as the last one was, this series is lamentably short. Just three more episodes to go.
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

It’ll be intriguing to see – if the series continues for long enough – whether Marchant will also let audiences in on the fact that when Garrow entered government he turned out to be a stubborn opponent of proposed reforms of the criminal law and its manic dependence on capital punishment. Inside that noble champion there was a power-that-be just waiting to get out.
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

Garrow’s Law stands charged primarily with political correctness, the attribution of 21st-century values to someone who lived two centuries ago. Last night’s plot, about the dumping of 133 African prisoners over board a slave ship as excess cargo, should have been moving, but the story was told in such black and white terms that it was anything but.
Andrew Billen, The Times

[It] is stuck in the middle years of the conflict and one of the most shocking aspects of the footage being shown is how well-behaved the combatants appear…The idea that those involved in prosecuting war can still behave like humans is hard to grasp, more so when we see footage from Belson and Auschwitz, both of which were built and run by humans too.
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

A Reluctant Tragic Hero, Vegas plays Tolkachov, a man at the very end of his tether, fed up with running tedious shopping errands for his family. Crook is Murashkin, Tolkachov’s mate, who should be – tries to be – sympathetic, but then gets it all wrong and adds to poor Tolkachov’s problems.
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Now, I’m a fan of Professor Iain Stewart; I like his boundless enthusiasm, I love his Lanarkshire accent (“morsels of the world and a flavour of its wonders were planted, grown and marvelled at across Scotland” sounds amazing). But this one, about the trees, was a bit much for me, I’m afraid. Perhaps the problem is that I don’t like Scottish trees very much.
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

[Undercover Boss] in which chief executives head back to the shop floor in disguise to see what it’s like to be a small cog in the machine – comes across like a Tea Partier’s version of an agit-prop movie. Or at least this week’s episode did, in which Michael Rubin, youthful CEO of a company that supplies online retailing services, cast off his tailored suit for a baseball cap and sneakers, to go and pack boxes in one of the firm’s ironically named “fulfilment centers”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

As usual in such sketch shows, the impressions, here by Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson, have a higher hit rate than the jokes. But last night’s sketch in which the ex-Corrie actress played EastEnders’ Pat Butcher about to rekindle an affair with Culshaw’s version of Ken Barlow was a masterclass in the difference between soap acting and real acting.
Andrew Billen, The Times