28 Sep '11

“Not all deforestation is bad, as you’d know if you lived next door to an out-of-control leylandii. Hedge Wars, Nick O’Dwyer’s film about ‘the plant which ate suburbia,’ visited several people who longed to hear the friendly sound of a blatting chainsaw, letting sunshine and sky back into their lives.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The film took a similarly unexpected turn as several owners of the leylandii agreed the trees were making their own lives just as miserable as that of their neighbours. Their problem was that they couldn’t afford the £750 it costs to have them removed.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“In the end, on a very limited budget and a very short timescale, a spectacular result was achieved. I’ve always been a little dubious about claims that high-end results can be achieved without serious money but I’m converted. The Di Martinos [family on show that turned garage into entertainment space] ended up with a seriously glamorous living space two grand under budget. Respect.”
Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express

“Along with the road testers of old, his challenge was to create an entire outfit for less than £50, the fashion equivalent of Kelly Hoppen’s task. Did he do it? Does the pope like incense and bells?”
Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express

“For ecologist Mike Hands (and, let’s face it, pretty much everyone in the audience for a More4 documentary) he was sitting in the middle of a “slowly enacted catastrophe. You wondered whether Up in Smoke had told you everything you needed to know about alley cropping.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The Louds [family] reportedly received a cash settlement to keep their disgruntlement about the drama t themselves – and [Craig] Gilbert disputed its account of events – which seemed more telling about television’s corrosive power than anything in the drama itself.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“This enjoyable drama has one problem. It was show not only with the fashions of the era, but in the style of a TV movie of the day. This may have been a joke or it may reflect how life in Santa Barbara actually is. But for something called Cinema Verite, the vérité style was the one thing that it could have done with.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Rather less rewarding was Regimental Stories, mainly because trying to squeeze the whole history of the Paras into half an hour was never going to work…complete with the “We pride ourselves on being the fittest regiment in the British Army” stuff from the officer class that is now de rigueur in every military TV doc these days.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“It’s a show I wanted to like, having remained loyal to WTD [Waking the Dead] for nine series, and after the car-crash of a first episode I’ve been willing it to improve. It has, but not enough.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Once again, the plot placed Frank beyond the pale even of the Chatsworth Estate and then reeled him in again. But none of us ever really did believe that he had beaten up, let alone raped, the batty former dinner lady Cynthia, 77 with an IQ to match, did we? It was standard our-hero’s-been-framed plot.”
Andrew Billen, The Times