Red Ape; Britain’s Best Home Cook; Safe; Riot Girls

“Watching Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan was harrowing. It was hard to decide which emotion prevailed by the end: miserable despair or blind fury at the greedy stupidity of our species.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“This was television doing all it could to stem an animal genocide. It was truly disturbing, a gruelling, haunting programme.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“There was more than a whiff of condescension as Indonesia’s shoddy shepherding of its rich natural heritage was discussed by outsiders. Still, the cutesy moments were irresistible. If Red Ape was a stealthy attempt to win us over to the wider argument regarding sustainable farming, it succeeded effortlessly.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“Red Ape was a documentary of two halves or, more accurately, one in which hope and despair flitted in turns across the screen.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Television is also here to comfort us, and Mary Berry’s new contest, Britain’s Best Home Cook does just that. The dishes are imaginative but straightforward — no fiddly squiggles of sauce or veg like flower arrangements here, just steaming platefuls of inviting food. After a lot of trial and error, the Beeb have cooked up a proper hit.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“I have a secret admiration for this show, not least beause it doesn’t even pretend not to be a straightforward Bake Off reboot. It’s even got Mary Berry stalking the aisles of sweating cooks like some beady-eyed domestic science mistress of yore.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Almost everything about Safe, from the acting to the dialogue, is pulpy with a vengeance. It’s as if writer Harman Coben was aiming to pay homage to Agatha Christie but ended up closer to a suburban English Murder She Wrote. Nonetheless, he makes every one of his characters feel plausibly sinister and throws in plenty of skilfully crafted cliff-hangers.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“What looked at one point like it might be Netflix’s Broadchurch soon starts to look more like Desperate Housewives. I’m very much enjoying these people, without really caring about them.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Riot Girls could almost have been contrived purely to annoy the Daily Mail. Truthfully? It was half funny. By which I mean about half the sketches worked, but the rest didn’t. Yet it was also brave. It made serious points about gender politics in a style that melded Trigger Happy TV with Smack the Pony.”
Carol Midgley, The Times