TV Critics: Catastrophe; Broadchurch; Silent Witness; Food Unwrapped; Exposure

“And praise be, after scores of British sitcoms based around the nonspecific, warm, fuzzy feeling generated by people being kind at each other, a half hour of narrative comedy that bursts with jokes. Solid, delicious chunks of funny pudding rather than the funny-flavoured foam we’ve been doused in lately.”
Julia Raeside, The Guardian

“Calling a show Catastrophe, and basing it on one of the hoariest old tropes in the book is either madness or valiant confidence. So is it funny? I’m going to duck that one like the coward I am at this point. The point is that it’s not the humour, really, that makes us come back to a comedy, it’s the characters –Catastrophe stands or falls on whether we like Sha-Rob, and thereafter whether we care what happens to them. It’s the carefully packaged sentiment that actually makes comedy work – more of that and Catastrophe may just be averted.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“Perhaps the chemistry between Delaney and Horgan is so strong, the balance so well-done, because the pair have created and written the series together. Certainly, they have come up with something rare — a good-hearted comedy, which still manages to be raw and rude.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“What remains to be seen is whether Catastrophe will be the sort of show that helps ease thirtysomething adolescents into a much-deferred maturity, or scares them off it entirely. I’m betting on the latter.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“There are endless unanswered questions: What exactly is wrong with Hardy’s heart? What dirt has Joe Miller got on the Vicar? Why does Tom hate Ellie? And where is Fred the toddler? Surely that childminder deserves a pay rise. Either way, the series’ drip, drip, drip of information against a water surge of unknowns is as grippingly effective as ever.”
Matilda Battersby, The Independent

“Well, now we know what all the secrecy was for. The producers didn’t dare let anyone discover that the second series of their Bafta-winning detective drama is a heap of old codswallop that makes no sense at all. The first episode was shaky. The second was riddled with errors. But the third was beyond all forgiving.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Fiction is surely only obliged to be pedantically true to the real world if it is drawing attention to a particular issue. As the archives of the courts of appeal show, detectives, barristers and judges do sometimes behave in improper ways, and there is no obligation for Chibnall’s fictional members of these professions to follow correct procedure at all times; he may be choosing to show the worst that can occur in a trial. A dramatic story is not a court of law, even if it’s set in one.”
Mark Lawson, The Guardian

“The strength of the Miller and Hardy plotline is itself a weakness for the show overall. Our empathy with the two leads is founded on our knowledge of what they went through in series one. We have no such empathy as yet with the principals from the Sandbrook case, and as such their arrival, disappearance and, last night, reappearance, are proving a bit of an unwelcome distraction from the grist of the Danny Latimer murder trial.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“Silent Witness has always been recklessly unrealistic, but it doesn’t affect the story-telling. The show has been getting away with it for 18 series, because it’s so fast-moving. That’s the way to twist a tale — it doesn’t have to be realistic, so long as it’s believable.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“This week’s Silent Witness features the usual helping of corpses and low-browed likely suspects but there’s also something more interesting bubbling away. As well as being a mystery, it’s a lesson in social work’s Catch-22: condemned for interfering, crucified for failing to act.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Food Unwrapped specialises in investigating the questions I didn’t even know existed. Much flurry and air miles were incurred last night, probing another “mystery” which had, over the centuries, I think, troubled no more than a handful of people. Food Unwrapped is beginning to seem like a feeble title for this show. A better one might be Vaguely Food-Related Questions You Never Wanted Answering.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“ITV’s investigation was graphic, as it took hidden cameras to talk to victims and to hunt those who exploit the vulnerable. However, the film also suffered from a rather ITV problem: the constant need to recap the content. With less repetition, and more fresh stories, this documentary could have been all the more powerful.”
Alex Hardy, The Times