19 Dec '11

“Does it render an hour-long explanation of quantum physics any more comprehensible to the average viewer if it takes place before a galaxy of stars? The answer is no, but the shiny-eyed, perpetually smiling professor certainly tried his damndest to make physics more accessible…Yet [it] was not a bad hour’s TV. There was something very refreshing in the simple lecture format, harking back to the days of Tomorrow’s World, in which a TV audience has to be consistently attentive.”
Arifa Akbar, The Independent

“That’s what this is – celebrity quantum mechanics.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“It very quickly became clear where it was going to end up two hours down the line.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“If you could look beyond the weeping children and dying horses however youd have seen the makings of a great new Sunday night drama.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Witless and unlovely, a drab little film that convinced only that some things are best left alone.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Not a jolly tale by any means but probably more truthful as a result”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Not Eddie Izzard at his enigmatic best…There was a worthiness, almost a preachiness, about it.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Just as with the denouement to the first series, wasn’t there in the end an inevitability about the culprit? Didn’t we, deep down, know for weeks?”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“This most reluctant television drama sidles onto the small screen with rolled eyes and a bored shrug. You really do get the feeling that it thinks sharing a box with The X Factor and cookery programmes is beneath it… The problem with this is that there is nowhere for these benighted kids to go. Their lives are seamless rounds of blight and hopelessness circling the plughole. England ’88 is a story without the possibility of improvement or escape.”
AA Gill, The Sunday Times