21 June '10

“Nick Maddocks’ touching programme…could be said to have spent a long time disproving something pretty obviously wrong. But the loving testimony of very old fathers and their also old children made the refutation extraordinarily powerful.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“There was a frustrating sense of vagueness to it all, as if, in the scramble to provide a 360-degree account of the 20th-century-dad experience, it had lost sight of the premise and just shovelled in every available anecdote, regardless.”
Sarah Dempster, The Guardian

“I can see why the makers wanted to challenge the stereotypical view of fathers 100 years ago as remote or cruel, but they fell into the trap of straining too far in the opposite direction, finding fewer contrasts than there manifestly are between the father of 1910 and the father of 2010.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

“Showing elderly contributors brightening up as they remembered their fathers and becoming choked with sadness as they recalled losing them lent this programme an emotional charge few history shows have matched.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Why does she turn every shop she visits into a version of the same middle class-targeted rip-off joint?”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Sadly the film succumbed to the African sun and, although its subject was the pace of change, it was a slow old hour.”
Andrew Billen, The Times