McMafia; Sue Perkins and the Chimp Sanctuary; Grandpa’s Great Escape

“It’s beautifully put together, the script is a cut above average, and there is a sense of much more power and energy waiting to be unleashed that may well be enough to carry viewers across eight episodes, Europe and most of the Middle East. Whether any of us can cope mentally with being shown what a web of irredeemable mass corruption the world is, I don’t know.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“McMafia is an ambitious drama, spanning the globe, promising to be complex in its exploration of 21st-century organised crime. Yet the first half felt stuck in second gear and merely like a procession of unpleasant rich men about whom you didn’t give much of a stuff. Then after about 32 minutes it found some throttle. Never have I been more glad to see extreme violence.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It is difficult to tell whether McMafia will scale the lustrous heights of the John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager or take a plunge into glossy melodrama like Sky 1’s Riviera. Norton walks a curiously stone-faced line between handsome hollowness and charisma as the somewhat inscrutable Alex. But there’s enough grit in his acting, and intrigue in the plot, to guarantee my place on the sofa for tonight’s follow-on.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“While being stylish, violent and reasonably pacey and so on, this seems less of a story about corporate skulduggery and more of a corporate product in itself. Looks the part… bit of a rip-off.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“It is hard to care very much for fund managers, let alone ones who are already set to inherit huge family wealth. McMafia is certainly slick. But as an expose of international organised money laundering, I fear it’s too dense to be the sexy thriller of 2018 that everyone so wants it to be.”
Daisy Wyatt, The i

“Sue Perkins and the Chimp Sanctuary was one of those documentaries that makes you feel ashamed to be human. Bravo to Perkins for making us confront what we do.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Perkins was moved by what she saw, but wholly unfitted to the task of explaining it. She knew nothing about chimp behaviour and was evidently scared witless by the aggression of the angrier males. Worse, she kept turning the camera back onto herself. This was a serious issue, one many viewers will care about intensely. It deserved a serious presenter — not a comic.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“All the components were there: the eccentric grandfather, the resourceful young lad, the surreal excursions into fantasy, and even a Spitfire — a salute to Dahl himself, who was a World War II pilot. Still, this never felt like the real thing. It was too artificial, too carefully constructed.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“David Walliams’s blend of topicality, sentiment and humour has worked well ever since his debut hit The Boy in a Dress. And it worked here even if the setting felt forced, jumping back to the Eighties via a convoluted narrative to get the timescale of having a war hero grandfather right. Grandpa’s Great Escape had plenty of laughs but never really addressed the issue at its heart – the care of elderly relatives – in an emotionally satisfying way.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“A bit daft, perhaps, and the daftness added to by the likes of Jennifer Saunders, Michelle Dotrice and Walliams himself mugging it up like a seaside panto. It carried an important message, though, about how we treat older people, and how to say goodbye.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express