5 May '11

“From the 60s soft porn background music to the manly “I’m not gay” joshing – “I love you Gennaro, but not in that kind of way” – this programme looked as if it had set out to tick as many Italian cliches as it could find. By the half-hour mark, I was starting to wonder if it might be some elaborate satire, but I fear it wasn’t.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“We, however, in Nicola Gooch’s Two Greedy Italians have found the perfect proxy for an Italian holiday. What a country!”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“It’s not exactly reinventing the omelette, but, in a sea of very predictable cook shows, it still makes a refreshing change.”
Matt Baylis, The Express

“It’s one of those culinary road movies (a genre originally kicked off by Two Fat Ladies and continued by The Hairy Bikers), jam-packed with synthetic dramas, comic bickering and the occasional bit of alfresco cooking.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Like all good hospital documentaries, it was both compulsive viewing and disturbing. Not just for the images of children’s skulls being taken apart and reassembled in a life and death jigsaw puzzle, but for the ambivalence it generates.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“There are a lot of things to see beside blood in these films, but it’s the wound that makes us look in the first place.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Watching Lee at work is like watching one of Channel 4’s animal autopsies. If you’ve got the stomach, you can’t look away.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“There is something brave about the way this show, year on year, tries to tackle messy, tricky subjects. Full marks for effort.”
Matt Baylis, The Express