TV Critics: Hospital; No Offence; The Lobby; The Reassembler

“This six-part documentary series is a timely slice of the reality behind the headlines. It makes a change from the usual stories of heroism you get in shows such as 24 Hours in A&E.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“The film was tense and it was depressing. Hospital was also impressively topical, not only because waiting times are all over the news but because it was filmed not last winter but in the approach to this.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Hospital documentaries are nothing new, of course. The difference here was the unflinching focus on the day-to-day juggling of resources. Starkly sobering it was, too.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph

“This was a programme with a single message, which never lost its focus or allowed its intensity to relent for a moment — an hour of television to leave you worn out and deeply worried.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Sensibly the film didn’t linger too much on the causes of the crisis and instead zoomed in on the emotional journeys.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“As with any programme on the NHS, I was constantly in awe of what its staff are able to do under such extreme pressure. But this hour-long episode felt nothing short of desperate.”
Chloe Hamilton, The i

“It’s an original beast, this show, sometimes coarse and witty, sometimes full of a very modern despair. Real policing might well be the same.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Its plotting is so breakneck and its script so packed with scabrous humour that watching it replicates the sensation of slugging back a triple espresso before bedtime.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph

“I had big hopes for the first part of Al Jazeera Investigates: The Lobby. There followed 30 minutes of laboriously filmed evidence that the Israeli embassy was helping to set up Zionist pressure groups in universities and among young Labour Party members. For the life of me I could not see what Israel was doing wrong here.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“At heart James May is a secondary school woodwork teacher who became a TV presenter by sheer bad luck. His mismanaged career is our good fortune.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail