TV Critics: Hunderby; Britain’s Oldest Crooks

“It is sick, and twisted. But it is not only sick and twisted, not just about pushing the boundaries of taste and broadcastability – it’s also beautiful. No, seriously, Hunderby is beautifully written. So, back at Julia and Barunka’s table they’re not just egging each other lower, and deeper, and darker; they are crafting exquisite dialogue.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Although there was a welcome touch of vintage Blackadder to the best bits, with the script cloaking a variety of dirty jokes in flowery circumlocution, the script was hung entirely on this premise of filthy goings-on in a decadent period setting. After a while you started to wonder if it had anything else up its sleeve. There didn’t seem to be as much of the careful structuring that had underpinned the first series.”
Charlotte Runcie, The Telegraph

“The dialogue stew is so rich that there is not an unfunny phrase within it: even “the whiff of my swoon” packs a stench. Hunderby would be nothing, however, without performances that go deeper than comic. Rosie Cavaliero brings pathos to Hesther. Rufus Jones as Foggerty could be cast as Lydgate in Middlemarch. Last night’s episode was stolen, however, by a truly malignant performance from Reece Shearsmith as a hessian-bockered pastor hunting for a wife and “brown jousters” (come on, use your imagination).
Andrew Billen, The Times

“It’s an ITV rule that any documentary at 9pm must regard the world as a fundamentally funny place…Where, however, were the laughs in the rheumatoid arthritis sufferer jailed for using and supplying cannabis to ease his pain? Could you locate the funny in the story of the 72-year-old woman in credit card debt who embezzled from her company? Only Dick Dawe, a difficult 81-year-old who has been to prison for breaking his abos, in one instance for ‘peacock and cockerel calling’, almost made me smile. Then I saw his wife in tears as he hauled himself off to court once more. And still the jaunty music played.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“This was no Weekend World-style mission to explain, packed with facts and theses and talking heads in beards and glasses pounding their way through the sociology of gerontocratic crime. However, there were some interesting factoids to be found among the debris of the long lives of crime featured.”
Sean O’Grady, The Independent

“This odd documentary managed to be both naïve and patronizing, as it introduced us to a succession of OAP jailbirds and made out that prison sentences were a massive over-reaction to their doddery misdemeanours. But try a little experiment. Imagine this duo were 21, not 81, and then see how trivial their crimes sound.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“If jail and ASBOs aren’t diverting a person from their path then plainly more jail and more ASBOs aren’t going to be the answer. It’s often said that older people are invisible in today’s world. Some of these men weren’t so much being overlooked though as excessively looked at. Overly policed, banged up like younger wrongdoers and not helped at all.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express