“Watching Ashes to Ashes is rather like watching a drama about a New Jersey Mafia family called the Altos; it never quite hits the same sublime notes as the original.” Read on for the full verdict on last night's TV.

Ashes to Ashes, BBC1
“Watching Ashes to Ashes is rather like watching a drama about a New Jersey Mafia family called the Altos; it never quite hits the same sublime notes as the original.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

Ashes to Ashes, BBC1
“Am I the only one who has had enough of Ashes to Ashes? Once - or even twice - with John Simm, and the Seventies, was quite a hoot. A further Eighties update, with the bird from Spooks, and a by-now very well-thumbed yarn about bent policemen in Soho, is just about the final Ahem.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

The Omid Djalili Show, BBC2
“I don't think it was my Middle England sensibilities that got in the way of my enjoyment of The Omid Djalili Show, I think it was the crassness and tired unoriginality of most of the material.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

The Omid Djalili Show, BBC1
“How has the BBC managed to turn one of the nation's most original comedians into the front man for a deadly conventional stand-up 'n' sketch show? Even the title of The Omid Djalili Show suggests creative weariness and his patter certainly does. There should be real edge to an Iranian making jokes about Muslims, but there isn't when the jokes about what, with careful vagueness, he calls ‘the Middle East' feature a comedian called Jimmy Carr Bomb (“He took the roof off”) and a local branch of the Samaritans that ‘we call a recruiting centre' [for suicide bombers].”
Andrew Billen, The Times

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, BBC2
“A series that has never been less than 100 per cent watchable, even though I've done much of the watching through my fingers.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

The Tattie Howkers, BBC2
“Neatly bringing our recession worries into perspective, The Tattie Howkers was the documentary equivalent of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch: ‘Poor? We used to gather potatoes for hours, bent over the fields, then sleep crammed into a cowshed with dozens of others, all for wages of £4 a week!' ‘We used to dream of sleeping in a cowshed!'”
Andrea Mullaney, The Scotsman

Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, C4
“Dr David Starkey's definitive tele-portrait of Henry VIII was [ ...] off the boil. The divorce from wife one and beheading of her successor should have been this four parter's finest hour but, perhaps because Starkey has already made a series about the wives, it felt like a luke warm reheat.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

Snow, BBC4
“The latest in the BBC's season of metrological sweetmeats, reminded us how lucky we are to live in a country where the skies keep on surprising us.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

Topics