Naked Beach; The Victim; Lee and Dean

“There are so many fascinating questions to be asked about body image and attitudes. Naked Beach didn’t answer these, nor did it set out to. But it can’t, at least, do any harm and may even enable you to triangulate some of your own issues.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Only an irredeemable cynic could suppose it was just another format devised to feed the obsessive appetite of Channel 4 execs for boobs and bums. The underlying concept had some value, to encourage young people to stop comparing themselves to airbrushed ideal physiques on social media. But it all felt drearily joyless and scripted.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It’s puzzling that there will be more episodes of what seems to be a formulaic show. Naked Beach is nourishing, though, and it certainly felt like a more honest treatment of nudity than the slyly salacious Naked Attraction, its Channel 4 stablemate.”
Tom Ough, The Telegraph

“Last night’s episode was some of the finest drama I have seen this year. Kelly Macdonald and James Harkness were outstanding in their poise and control. It wasn’t perfect but it explored with humanity and intelligence the wretched axis of child murder, offenders’ rights and vigilantism in an age when the law and the internet often seem to operate on different planets.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Usually a hyped drama stripped across a week suffers from a lull around Wednesday. The Victim, by contrast, has maintained tension throughout by asking different questions each episode, effectively functioning as a new drama every hour. This was a brave, timely drama that confronted moral dogma head on.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“The mockumentary style is overused in comedy, but this is one of the better examples, eking gentle, sometimes sad comedy from small lives and a close male friendship/bromance between Lee and Dean.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It’s been said before that TV is not very good at anatomising male friendship beyond ladz, bantz or lolz and in that regard Lee and Dean really is out on its own – it’s men behaving badly in the age of mindfulness. Somewhere in there is a show like no other on TV. Unfortunately, it’s cocooned in an outdated format and hamstrung with threadbare one-liners.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph