“Could not be taken seriously either as history or biography.” Read on for the verdict on last night’s TV.

Into the Storm

Into the Storm, BBC2

“This glossy, jokey 90-minute romp through our finest hour could not be taken seriously either as history or biography. Churchill might have liked it but that is because the director Thaddeus O’Sullivan had turned his life into an Alexander Korda biopic.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“The challenge confronting viewers… was largely the same as the challenge to the actors. It was to avoid getting bogged down in the accuracy, or otherwise, of the looks and voices of the main players. Sadly, it was a challenge that this viewer failed to meet.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

“Brendan Gleeson does a lovely Churchill. He has the prowl and the scowl, the lovable curmudgeonliness, the KBO.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

The Great Escape: The Reckoning, Channel 4

“Not quite as it is in the movie… Reality meant a miserably cold few days on the run, followed by, for nearly all of them, a bullet in the back of the head. This interesting documentary is really about the next stage.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“A terrific documentary about the largely successful post-war effort to find and punish the Nazis responsible for the cold-blooded execution of 50 of the 76 Allied airmen who in March 1944 tunnelled out of Stalag Luft III and into wartime and indeed cinematic legend.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

“To a modern audience, some aspects of [Frank McKenna’s] faith seemed too simple.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

Life, BBC1

“There’s one little problem with Life, the way they try to join it all together into some sort of story… It’s porn, animal porn. Brilliant porn, the best there is – but still porn.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

Murderland, ITV1

[SPOILER ALERT]

“For ponderous, pretentious, improbably and unpleasant though the last episode was, it at least concluded with dodgy retired detective Doug Hain, being mown down by a car.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

Is it Better to be Mixed Race?, Channel 4

“There are educated, informed people in Britain who still trot out the pseudo-science of bloodlines and racial purity. Maybe it’s worth setting out all the facts, just so that point of view doesn’t gain any more followers. But in the case of most viewers, Aarathi was preaching to the choir.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

Britain’s Most Disgusting Food, BBC3

“I admired the legwork Riley put into his nausea-inducing investigation, but not his cold-hopping irony.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

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