TV Critics: Hotel India; Star Paws; Secrets from The Asylum

“If you saw BBC2’s Inside Claridges two years ago, you’ve seen Hotel India. As an insight into the terrifying levels of ennui among the millionaire-class it had some virtue, but hardly one unique to India.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Hotel India wanted to be compelling, but it couldn’t quite find its stories or its characters. The staff were so meekly eager to please that it was impossible to build any drama and guests were mostly too shy to appear on camera.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“What Hotel India needed was a real gentleman to elevate Lynn Alleway’s four-part series beyond a study of a place and into a compelling study of characters. Step forward Mr Chaskar, who I am confident will be a meme by this morning.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“Unfortunately the obsession on the part of all the programme-makers and commissioners with ‘luxury’ is both the undoing of this programme and the hotel genre as a whole. You learn as much about India as you would if you were whisked around it in the first-class section of a plane.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“We were – rightly – not allowed to forget that only a tiny percentage of India’s 1.2 billion population ever experience the luxuries of the Taj. Even if this point was banged home by the programme-makers, it was still a humbling, fascinating look at a country where the chasm between rich and poor is vast.”
Sally Newall, The Independent

“The appeal of this entertaining programme was the juxtaposition of animals that couldn’t care less about media stardom with the adults whose careers depended on it.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Not entirely surprisingly, the owners turned out to be far more odd than any of the sometimes doubtful talents of their pets. It’s a weird world, but a strangely seductive one.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Something about the Victorian asylum system peeps through the bluster to appear poignant even now.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“It was hard to watch, but harder still to ignore – a brilliant example of how popular television can also be socially important.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail