29 Oct '10

“The programme’s omission was a discussion of the children’s social skills. Pointedly, however, its most refreshing contributions were from the teenagers who no longer wanted to feature in the programme, having decided their IQs would no longer, as one put it, define them.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“So many children have dropped out and been replaced since the first programme in 2007 that the original plan – to see how the effects of early extreme intelligence unfold over time – is now impossible… the problem is further aggravated by some odd choices of emphasis.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“It’s all a bit odd, really, watching these clever, precocious little people.”
Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent

“A new series dragging its knuckles along the trail grazed by Sky1’s An Idiot Abroad. Should any of the parents from the C4 doc wish to take the edge off their infant phenomenon, plonk them in front of this, step back and watch their IQ tumble.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“The televisual equivalent of having a bucket of warm wee drizzled over your head for an hour. It is the kind of programme that makes you start casting around for a dry pen and paper as soon as it is over so that you can write to someone…in search of justice, compensation or solace of some kind. An insipid, witless trundle across northern France, conveying nothing even in passing of the scenery, history or je ne sais quoi of the region.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Monte Carlo or Bust is not dissimilar [to All at Sea]… Why these celebrities? Why, in fact, the programme? – never becomes clear. And yet it wasn’t a bad watch.”
Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent

“The programme only just missed outright hagiography (and didn’t miss at all being an extended advert for his recently published Life) but at least sidestepped the usual concentration on his hellraising days and painted instead a more nuanced picture of the man behind the music.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian