TV Critics: Baby Makers; Polar Bear Family and Me; Truth About Magaluf; Lewis

“The standout star, in terms of making this an entertaining documentary, is the boss of the Hewitt fertility centre in Liverpool, Dr Charles Kingsland. As a gynaecologist, he’s like a mechanic in a Mercedes garage, he says. “Women are built to last, they live longer than men…We are the Ford Escorts, we race around for 60,000 miles, then our big ends blow.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“As questions of human rights, “Nature’s way” and an appropriately ticky-tocky soundtrack bubbled away, the film was not afraid of a little gallows humour. One lab technician allowed herself a chuckle when she accidentally beheaded a live sperm cell.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“Amid the space age technology Baby Makers: The Fertility Clinic revealed a microcosmic society of scientists, technicians and caregivers, still rooted in the nitty-gritty business of making babies.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Along comes a large lady bear and sets about hunting – not for seals, though, but for Gordon. She sniffs at the door, then bangs on the plastic with her huge paws, climbs on top, shakes the whole thing, gnaws at the corner with her enormous mouth…It is extraordinary footage, the nearest to knowing what it’s like to be eaten by a bear without actually being eaten by a bear.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“You don’t have to wait for anything these days, as the opening sequence from last night’s episode demonstrated…right off the bat we, we got the money shots of Buchanan stroking a pair of polar bear cubs as they clung to their tranquilized mother and footage from the remarkable sequence in which he sat inside a Perspex cube as a full-grown polar bear tried to open it and eat him. And then we sat around until we could watch them again, but this time in context. It’s a bit like a striptease that begins with the dancer dropping everything, then getting dressed and doing it again.
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Stacey Dooley offered a “story we’ve never seen before” at the beginning of The Truth About Magaluf. You need to stay in a bit more, Stacey, if you really believe that. The seamy underbelly of British holiday resorts has been repeatedly covered, in virtually every television format available apart from the phone – vote talent content.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“An extremely clever, well-written and well-acted story, delivering the sort of mildly intellectual chewing fodder fans of Morse came to love and came to find sorely lacking in most of its sequel.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express