19 April '12

“Michael Waldman had constructed his film (quite effectively, it’s only fair to say) around that sale, telling the stories behind the major lots, which offered a glittering aide-mémoire to Taylor’s life and lovers. And it wasn’t all a tedious bore.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It was all disgustingly decadent, entirely morally unconscionable and the most fun I’ve had in ages.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Only after chronicling a decade in which Taylor had become owner of the world’s  two most expensive diamonds and its most famous pearl, did Miranda Richardson’s voiceover concede that, with Taylkor no longer making “movies that mattered”, the conspicuous consumption was “veering on the decadent.”Andrew Billen, The Times

“The strong cocktail of wealth and sleaze, fine things and rotten behaviour that made Taylor’s collection of stories so intriguing a bit like the whole of Hollywood cast in a precious stone.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“Compared with, say, Tuesday night’s Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, Divine Women feels a little bit dry and clunky. Hughes is more often required to elicit from experts information that she must surely know herself, rather than being allowed to display her knowledge directly, which is slightly wearisome (and ironic, given the subject matter).”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“As Bettany Hughes descended into the cell where the vestal virgin Marcia, charged with taking a lover, was left to rot, she looked distinctly watery-eyed. But the best sequence had Hughes in feistier form.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“It gave us two different yet strikingly similar images of females in religion.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“It’s Michelin stars for the eyes, Pot Noodle for the ears.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent