Inside No. 9; The Real T. Rex with Chris Packham; Prince: Last Year of a Legend

“The mix of a Comedy of Errors-style plot, a bit of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, some Macbeth, a dash of Hamlet and large hammy helpings of high farce is very silly and extremely good fun. And not at all as easy as they make it look.”
Julia Raeside, The Guardian

“It was a close thing, but Zanzibar was so concisely constructed and nimbly bequipped that any initial reservations soon gave way to chuckles, nay, guffaws. With drama, blank verse in a modern setting can make for an oddly artificial feel, but as an experiment in fun, Inside No 9 was just that.”
James Jackson, The Times

“While not one of their most chilling or profound efforts, it was certainly among their finest technical achievements. And crucially, very funny. An indulgence, perhaps, a frippery, probably. But a triumph nonetheless – the Bard would have been pleased.”
Lucy Jones, The Telegraph

“The pair’s love of witty word-play and innuendo remains pleasingly at the fore, and excels here in a bawdy, amusing tale (golden showers and all) that old Will himself would surely have approved of. ‘Zanzibar’ is funny, intricately conceived, joyfully performed, and the whole tongue-in-cheek caper comes together in an entertaining final flourish, complete with a wink and a smile.”
Mark Butler, The i

“It was, I guess, a very clear demonstration that the show’s writers and main stars, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, can do more than the standard, half-hour chillers. What fool ever thought they couldn’t? Why did they have to prove it last night with something that, while clever, was also unfunny, outdated, tedious and most importantly, not scary at all?”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“As documentary, The Real T-Rex wasn’t quite as revelatory as it appeared to believe. Nonetheless, this one-off crackled with derring-do and it’s hard to object to a nature programme culminating with the presenter pretending to have the daylights spooked out of him by a tangerine dinosaur with wilting mohawk.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“The climax was the grand unveiling of the revised beast, a slightly hokey encounter in which Messrs Packham and Rex gazed at each other in awe and bemusement in a field. I preferred the creature in the B-movies of yore.”
James Jackson, The Times

“Even if you thought you’d long grown out of dinosaurs, this was as much fun as watching Jurassic Park for the first time with a barrel of popcorn.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, Channel 4’s Prince: Last Year of a Legend couldn’t offer much insight into Prince’s emotional life in the final year. At times the script sounded like cobbled-together facts plucked from his encyclopedia page, or a Prince bingo drinking game. Essentially, it was Prince By Numbers; possibly diverting for someone new to him, but lacking depth and the insight promised in its title.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“After a bit more stating of the bleeding obvious, we have some interesting material about the private man behind the jaw-dropping stage shows. What began as prosaic ended up close to poetry when the fans, and Prince himself, were given the space to speak.”
Julia Raeside, The Guardian