TV critics' verdict on programmes - including the start of BBC2’s Ben’s Zoo - broadcast on 21 November 2007.

Ben’s Zoo, BBC2
“Ben’s Zoo is certainly a very British kind of show. It almost sounds like the plot of an Ealing comedy.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

Ben’s Zoo, BBC2
“either the programme itself is actually just a quasi-promotional tool for the zoo, or that the idiom and the texture of reality TV has become so pervasive in our lives that nothing we do has any value unless it’s inscribed within a shoddy and not particularly interesting four-part BBC series.
Kevin Maher, The Times

Ben's Zoo, BBC2
“The overall result was a pleasant enough piece of television, although not one that ever seemed to deserve an hour of BBC2’s prime time schedule.”
James Walton, The Daily Telegraph

Ben’s Zoo, BBC2
“It’s like Property Ladder with animal suffering.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

Age of Love, E4
“We’re already at episode four in a dating show that gets more profoundly compelling and emotionally layered each week.”
Kevin Maher, The Times

Ugly Betty, E4
“The cartoon capers of Ugly Betty continue apace, this week guest-starring Victoria Beckham as Wilhelmina's celebrity bridesmaid. Those who remember - or, more accurately, those who cannot forget, no matter how many pills they take - her fellow Spice Girl Geri Halliwell's painful cameo in Sex and the City were braced for the worst, but in the event she acquitted herself quite well. The writers sensibly kept her part mostly pout-based and wrote the jokes around her.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

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