TV Critics: HMP Norwich; Horizon; Never Seen A Doctor

“With its urgent ambient music and its insistence on replaying the juiciest and weepiest moments of footage, Her Majesty’s Prison: Norwich was a deliberate heartstring-tugger. But interesting stories lurked behind the off-the-peg style and Paul McGann’s Concerned Narrator voice-over.”
Tim Martin, The Telegraph

“Her Majesty’s Prison: Norwich was a self-pitying whinge on behalf of men who’d put their families through hell yet expected our sympathy. This one-off programme was awash with muddy sentiment and dubious statistics.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Prisoners, sadly, are a pretty homogenous lot, at least in Norwich. There is not a serial poisoner in one cell, a terrorist in the next and a wife murderer in the third. There are, instead, a lot of men involved in the drugs trade. It is not clever and it is not glamorous.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Given that two-thirds of the men in HMP Norwich have a history of drug use, that most of the men featured were serving sentences for drug offences, and that drug smuggling is the inevitable downside of prison visiting, it was hard not to regard the whole system as a largely ineffectual treatment programme. Looking round the sides of the documentary, you might have spotted a good case for drug-law reform.”
Tim Dowling, The Guardian

“Contrary to the stories about PlayStations and pizza deliveries, HMP Norwich looked like a place where privileges had to be earned and could be swiftly lost. There were good things about the system. But it still seemed like a way of producing prisoners rather than preventing them.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Escape from Dartmoor’s maximum security jail would be a doddle, compared to getting off this frozen continent. But nobody wanted to leave. This seemed to be the most contented village in the world, stress-free and filled with purpose, in a frostily beautiful landscape.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“BBC weatherman Peter Gibbs had worked at the South Pole 35 years ago and viewed it as a highlight of his youth. So why – as far as we could tell from this far from intimate community portrait – are there no fights, no drugs, no tears on Halley? It is because, from letting off weather balloons to abseiling down crevices, everyone has something interesting to do.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“I could have stood a little more coverage of what draws people to this distant wilderness – and even Gibbs, who was posted to the station in 1980 and was now revisiting for the first time since, seemed to have trouble putting the strength of his feelings into words.”
Tim Martin, The Telegraph

“Unusually, for any programme where the climate crops up, this one didn’t focus on doom. Human ingenuity was plainly carrying on uninterrupted down at the South Pole. Perhaps one day it can save the planet.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Never Seen a Doctor managed to rise above its reality TV trappings, including a jaunty score that might have been repurposed from an old episode of Come Dine With Me. Katie Piper is an able and empathetic interviewer – visibly undergoing treatment herself throughout – and there is no downplaying the transformative power a little timely medical intervention can have on a person.”
Tim Dowling, The Guardian