“Its visual mode is realist but the dialogue has the poetry of a Scorsese gangster movie.” Read on for the critics' full verdict on last night's TV.

Generation Kill, FX
“If you were looking for an artful dramatisation of the deeper morality of the war, you were not going to get it: this was a species of tourism itself, an opportunity to visit another country, one whose inhabitants were exclusively male and disinclined to think too deeply before they pulled the trigger. But it was tourism of a very high order.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

Generation Kill, FX
“I promise you that watching it for a second time, it is even better than I thought. Its visual mode is realist but the dialogue has the poetry of a Scorsese gangster movie.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

A Short Stay in Switzerland, BBC1
“I could have done without the flutes, needlessly insisting on the sorrow this state of affairs would induce, but the drama itself tightened a hand around your throat until it ached.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

A Short Stay in Switzerland, BBC1
“A thoroughly disquieting experience. And that, of course, was the point.”
Paul MacInnes, The Guardian

A Short Stay in Switzerland, BBC1
“Last night's A Short Stay in Switzerland certainly presented its matriarch in a favourable and even heroic light. Yet to have been truly effective, either as drama of propaganda, it should have moved the viewer, and it didn't me, or not very much.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

Being Human, BBC3
“A bubbly British enterprise that falls someplace between Buffy and Hollyoaks.”
Paul MacInnes, The Guardian

Being Human, BBC3
“It's classic sitcom territory - the flat-share with a spin, and fittingly enough for today's escapist TV climate, the spin is a supernatural one. But it's not just a heartbeat that the Being Human gang lack - their comedy is also suspiciously thin on jokes.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

No Holds Bard, BBC1 Scotland
“Despite its shortcomings, No Holds Bard was amiable enough, and I can't completely dismiss any comedy so brazenly daft as to include a taxi firm called "Cabbie Burns". If nothing else, at least BBC Scotland now has a comedy it can wheel out every Burns night for all eternity, just as STV do every Hogmanay with the much funnier and more loveable The Steamie.”
Paul Whitelaw, The Scotsman

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