“This is an astonishing, beautiful, thrilling series – a sexual-consent drama if you want the one-line pitch, but so, so much more than that. It sums up the contemporary world and sexual landscape Arabella and her friends live in – the soft contours and shifting boundaries of which they are perpetually navigating in their early 30s. It is, in short, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement without a false note in it, shot through with humour and with ideas, talent and character to burn at every perfectly plotted turn. It is the drama of the year so far.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“What you do not expect from this story is humour. Yet Coel has pulled off the seemingly impossible by creating a drama that is frequently funny. We have seen the aftermath of rape on television many times – the scene in the shower, the visit to police, the swabs, examinations and interviews. I May Destroy You is not like that. What Coel seems to be saying is that trauma doesn’t erase the essence of you. I’m not sure what this drama is doing on BBC One, when it portrays a sex-and-drugs lifestyle that will be familiar to BBC Three’s audience but not to a sizeable proportion of BBC One’s (average age: 61). But give it a chance, whoever you are. It deserves to be seen.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The multitalented Michaela Coel has said that the BBC gave her free rein and no restrictions when making her partly autobiographical new drama I May Destroy You. Sometimes it showed. While her performance was excellent, the first episode often felt unfocused and scattered, with maybe 12 or 13 characters introduced in the first 23 minutes, which is a lot to process. I realise that this was intentional, a reflection of the chaotic, distracted life of the protagonist Arabella, a voice-of-a-generation writer who has become famous via Twitter and enjoys a partying, drug-fuelled lifestyle. More focus and cohesion would have helped. I did enjoy the intensity of Coel’s performance; when she is in a scene you don’t tend to look at anyone else.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“I May Destroy You might sound like a challenging watch. And, at times, as Coel examines issues of consent and desire, it is. But it is also a life-affirming examination of being young and full of dreams in London. This is a show shot through with humour and filled with believable characters, from Weruche Opia’s kind-hearted Terry to Paapa Essiedu’s confident Kwame. It all feels emotionally true. There is none of the judgement here that would mar a lesser show. Instead Coel is careful and clever in the way in which she peels back Arabella’s layers. The result is a bold, brave and quite brilliant series. It deserves to be celebrated as one of the shows of the year.”
Sarah Hughes, The i

“The story is told in half-hour bites, and the first wasn’t enough to gauge yet how engaging it will be. But Coel is a powerful actress, and I May Destroy You is based on traumatic personal experience. Give it a couple of weeks: this could be the new Fleabag.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Amid the noise about Black Lives Matter came Sitting in Limbo, a film that quietly laid out one of the most shameful chapters in recent political history: the Windrush scandal. The writer was Anthony Bryan’s own brother Stephen S Thompson. who did an excellent job of recreating the warmth of the family set-up surrounding Bryan and his partner, Janet. But the script was equally strong on the dehumanising effects of the hostile environment policy, and the coldness of the staff who implement it.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Writer Stephen S Thompson didn’t trowel on the drama; he didn’t need to. The facts are horrific enough. This was hugely affecting drama, but I would have liked to have seen in it more of the politicians who drove this policy rather than the faceless uniformed guards who had to implement it at the sharp end. Dramatists should regularly jog our memories about this national scandal.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Thompson’s script was smart about the stupidity of bureaucracy, the way you are reduced from a human being to a tick on a list, whether in the big moments, such as the ridiculous hoops that Anthony was forced to jump through to prove his right to remain, or the small, demeaning ones, such as the refusal to allow detainees to wear hats when meeting their families. Ultimately what this feature-length drama made devastatingly clear was that the Windrush scandal may have led to the fall of a home secretary but it did so at the price of people’s health, sanity and safety. For years these people thought of this country as their home. The power of Sitting in Limbo was how it slowly unpicked that notion of home to show how horrifyingly temporary it can be.”
Sarah Hughes, The i

“Albert granted director Michael Waldman permission to film behind the scenes in the palace and to attend a party or two. This three-part documentary is simply happy to slip past the silken entrance rope and squeeze inside. In return for access, there are no difficult questions or sharp observations. A couple of brief, fawning interviews with the Prince allow him to get away with saying practically nothing. Inside Monaco amounts to a promotional video: you can imagine it on a loop in the hotel foyers, an endless cavalcade of air kisses and supercars.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail