9 Dec '11

“I’d rather hoped that Kevin’s Grand Design would turn out to be a personal project, but although he seemed to have heavily invested in it, both monetarily and financially, we aren’t yet to find out what the Nit-picker’s Nit-picker would actually produce if he self-built a home for himself. Instead, this was to be an exercise in exemplary development.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It’s obviously a very different kind of project from the usual Grand Designs fare – not just in terms of building but also as television. Something like this, especially the initial stages, involves a lot of negotiating with councils, falling out with architects, finding new architects, finding a new site, in Swindon, planning committees, more negotiations, objections … yeah, Dullsville, right? A hard one to turn into don’t-turn-over TV.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“This programme recalls Blummenthal’s Big Chef Takes on Little Chef in which the wacky cook did something rather special to Little Chef, Popham. Although the end result was appetising, it was not an easy cook for anyone. McCloud’s five year slog looked as though it was even harder.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Anna Friel plays the increasingly suspicious widow and Marc Warren plays Greg, who circumvents the drawback of playing a character killed in the first five minutes by turning up for the occasional posthumous chat. And it’s fine, if you have a surfeit of time on a Thursday evening and are looking for a way to cull an hour.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It’s not The Killing though, is it? And the appearances of Marc Warren, the dead guy, are a bit Patrick Swayze in Ghost, super schmaltzy. But it’s certainly intriguing, enough to want to stay with it, if only for Anna Friel …”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“The concept of a young widower determined to find out if the woman in the fatal car crash with her husband was his mistress is strong, but the execution of this dramatisation of Nicci French’s novel was pedestrian.”
Andrew Billen, The Times