Escape at Dannemora; Pubs, Ponds and Power

“This is an elegant, if meandering, take on the affair. It is slow to the point of inertia. Prison is boring and repetitive, and it makes that point well.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“It’s one thing to explain how the layout of villages enabled the functionality of feudal society and another to make it engaging. And the programme — which showed off England at its glorious sunny best, thanks to some epic drone camerawork — only really woke up, or woke me up, when describing the brutality beneath the bucolic.”
James Jackson, The Times

“A history lesson for primary school pupils on Pubs, Ponds And Power revealed that court leets, a sort of Neighbourhood Watch with real fangs, had the power to impose fines for anti-social behaviour, such as letting your pigs trample someone else’s veg. Bring back the court leet! With police too short-staffed to investigate burglaries, and chief constables who think it’s fine to have drugs on sale in every park, ordinary citizens need a way to keep law and order.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Cute and cuddly was about right for an hour of laid-back anthropomorphism that couldn’t have been more Aussie if the koalas were drinking tinnies of Castlemaine XXXX by their billabong. But not all natural history needs to be a sonorous sledgehammer epic showcasing the latest 10K photography, particularly when a species has such irresistible character.”
James Jackson, The Times

“Ms Balding opened the show by arguing that sport touches more lives than science or the arts, but all of her heroes seemed to be chosen for their politics. Billie Jean made great strides for feminism, but to claim she was a greater player than Roger Federer is daft.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail