Girlfriends; Miriam’s Big American Adventure; A Stitch In Time

“Chaps of a certain age had better find important jobs to do at 9pm on Wednesdays for the next few weeks … because their ladies will be watching Girlfriends. This rollicking menopausal melodrama boasts an all-star cast and a writer at the height of her powers.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“I expected a carousel of middle-age clichés: anti-wrinkle treatments, divorces, hot flushes. And, actually, Girlfriends delivers all of these things. But it is not awful or depressing. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I immediately watched episode two.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“When careworn Linda, self-involved Sue and exasperated Gail were allowed to get on with finding nuance and subtlety in the seeping unhappiness of their late-middle age, Girlfriends gripped. For the most part, however, it just floundered in extraneous subplots.”
Gabriel Tate, The Telegraph

“It’s a shame that in this first episode, good intentions seem to outweigh great drama. Wanamaker seems unbelievably meek and dowdy while Richardson, although she looks like she is having a ball, plays Sue with the same vampish chutzpah as Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous and Samantha in Sex and the City. You just can’t imagine that that is all there is to these women.”
Bernadette McNulty, The i

“It’s a set-up in which nobody is without some force 9 gale of chaos raging around their split ends and that does, of course, ensure there’s lots going on. It’s possible to get compassion fatigue with dramas, though, as you can the news.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Wherever it goes, it will be real and glorious and fun. The results of people with talent to burn writing, playing and directing (as Mellor is also doing) what they know always are.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“I don’t get TV’s obsession with perpetually sending celebrities abroad and thought the Real Marigold on Tour was deathly dull, but at least Margolyes earns her keep on these jaunts by never being boring, though she can be brusque. Still, I think we learnt as much about Margolyes as we did the American Dream.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“This was an hour of few revelations, but many minor pleasures and the occasional overturned expectation on the part of both presenter and viewer. Margolyes cut a gloriously incongruous figure, yet this inveterate talker also proved an engaged listener as young black men, frozen out of the American Dream, articulated their frustrations and fears.”
Gabriel Tate, The Telegraph

“This half-hour documentary packed far more information on the history and art of making clothes than you’ll find in an entire series of the Great British Sewing Bee.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail