TV Critics: Exodus; Red Rock; The Secret Life of Children’s Books

“Within minutes of watching Exodus: Our Journey to Europe, I was weeping. I did not stop until the credits rolled. I have not stopped thinking about it since. Shown in three parts, this is ambitious, necessary, and devastating documentary-making.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“Exodus: Our Journey to Europe provides a shocking, ground-level view of Europe’s refugee crisis. More to the point, it shows us who those refugees are and why they’re here.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Exodus: Our Journey to Europe offered the most remarkable insight into the refugee crisis yet. Far from being huddled masses, here were articulate, decent individuals. In fact, the whole thing was like a dignified retort to Nigel Farage’s Breaking Point poster, with an intimacy absent from anything else seen on the crisis.”
James Jackson, The Times

“What the programme does is humanise and individuate refugees just as Cameron’s ‘swarm’ and Farage’s ‘Breaking Point’ posters would encourage people to view them as one unfortunate mass. But more than that, it gives them agency, their shaky recordings viscerally conveying the disorientation of their situation.”
Hugh Montgomery, The i

“This film was undoubtedly powerful, but it could not offer easy answers to tough questions. Will it have changed minds already set against allowing more of the desperate and dispossessed to a place of greater safety? Probably not.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“Red Rock combines the ropey, soapy style of lunchtime drama with the windswept charm of rural detective shows such as Shetland and Vera. It’s a thumping good plot. And that’s all we demand: everything else is forgivable, even expected.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Rev Coles succinctly conveyed The Water Babies’ magical and ‘maddening’ aspects (mainly the anti-Irish bigotry), helped by some imaginative direction. The shots of aquatic creatures in jars created their own intriguing ambience.”
James Jackson, The Times