Rick Stein’s Road to Mexico; Stuck on You; Motherland; The A Word

“Two weeks in and Rick Stein’s Road To Mexico still had not actually got as far as Mexico. To be fair, though, California is a big place and there are a lot of nice things to eat in it.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“WTF? Rick Stein is showing me how to make a frigging salad dressing? Like the last 50 years, and Elizabeth David and Delia Smith, never happened? What’s next? Tune in next week, for toast?”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“In ten seconds, we travelled from a slightly loopy man from Monterey having a weep about Donald Trump, to Rick and the profits at his upmarket chippies in Cornwall. This baffling sequence had no place in the finished documentary. It was included only because it fitted the BBC’s anti-Brexit agenda. The rest of the show was little better.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Here was a history of the football-sticker album that wasn’t simply an I Love the ’70s-type laff at memories of going ‘got … got … need’ in the playground — although actually there was quite a bit of that, and the programme’s basic style did insist on incessant signposting on the soundtrack.”
James Jackson, The Times

“This was a history of the playground swapsie craze, all the way back to the football cards of George Best’s day. Unfortunately, it kept getting bogged down in the minutiae of business decisions. This was rather like getting buttonholed by an accountant at a party.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan’s new six-part sitcom delicately mines the depths of working motherhood and spits it out in all its blunt, uncensored, chaotic glory. But Motherland is perhaps not as subtle as her previous work, with more reliance on visual gags.”
Rachel Ward, The Telegraph

“The main storyline about music-loving Joe and his parents continued to deliver satisfaction and insight. The closing scenes in which the three went for a late-night picnic under the stars was as touching a depiction of a struggling family’s love and dreams as can be imagined.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“We should treasure television shows like The Secret Life Of 4-Year-Olds for showing us the undoctored full picture, sometimes cute-ish, sometimes brutish, quick-witted and daft all at the same time and where four-year-olds are concerned, always at high volume too.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express