TV critics' verdict on programmes - including the return of ITV1’s crime drama Blue Murder - broadcast on 3 December 2007

Blue Murder, ITV1
“Janine [DCI Lewis] herself firmly remains the star of the show.”
James Walton, Daily Telegraph

Blue Murder, ITV1
“Because the episode was about a football player, meanwhile, every scene was stuffed with people banging on about the beautiful game, to the point where you wondered if anyone really remembered the murder.”
Matt Bayliss, Daily Express

Blue Murder, ITV1
“Did Jane Tennison really battle through misogyny, sexism and the ranks to trail blaze for Janine bleeding Lewis?”
Andrew Billen, The Times

Help Me Love My Baby, C4
“ -the work of therapists at the famous Anna Ford Centre in London couldn’t make a better subject for a documentary.”
Matt Bayliss, Daily Express

Help Me Love My Baby, C4
“A moving film.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

Mark Lawson Talks To David Renwick, BBC4
“Depending upon where you start, it was either a fine example of how niche channels can devote time to subjects that are of great interest to relatively few, or a peculiar example of television gazing self-importantly at its own navel.”
Matt Warman, Daily Telegraph

Mark Lawson Talks To David Renwick, BBC4
“Renwick, who started off in comedy writing jokes for The Two Ronnies and also devised the labyrinthine plots of Jonathan Creek, is a gentle, self-effacing genius of a man, who fully deserved his evening in the sun, or even on BBC4.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work, BBC1
“Buckingham Palace -seems very large, rather inconvenient and surprisingly ugly. The life the Queen leads is most clearly reflected in the faces of her guests. Like any bright object, it is easier to see her in a mirror.”
Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian

Nigella Express, BBC2
“ -her vocabulary is as artery-clogging as her recipes. Last night, her “gloriously burnished” sausages in their “conker-shiny glaze” were “the alpha and omega of the cocktail-sausage world”, whatever that means. She also extolled the herbal gassiness of something, and the aromatic nuttiness of something else. Actually, aromatic nuttiness perfectly sums up Nigella herself. She gets more aromatically nutty by the week.”
Brian Viner, The Independent

Topics