“It is funny and it is (fairly) clever, which is pretty close to the panel-show holy grail.”
Insert Name Here, BBC2
“In the best possible way, this feels like a show where everyone has been hugged. It’s partly that the concept is so loose that the conversation can spin off anywhere. It’s partly that the chemistry really worked, with everyone contributing intelligently and amusingly. It is funny and it is (fairly) clever, which is pretty close to the panel-show holy grail.”
Alex Hardy, The Times
“With its breezy contempt for its own formalities, Insert Name Here occupies roughly the same ground as 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, although the latter has the distinct advantage of a well-understood and much-loved set of actual rules. All in all, an amiable enough half hour, and no one will ever accuse Insert Name Here of taking itself too seriously.”
Tim Dowling, The Guardian
Silent Witness, BBC1
“If you like your crime dramas dimly lit, ably acted, only occasionally preposterous and chock-full of cut-open dead bodies, then Silent Witness is still right where it always was. Eat beforehand, and wait at least an hour.”
Tim Dowling, The Guardian
“It isn’t easy to pull off this kind of superior schlock. Both Emilia Fox and David Caves are adept at handling the join-the-dots clues and the hammy plot exposition lines that keep the mystery going for several hours. Throw in those grippingly gruesome moments when they examine slash marks on the suicides’ wrists and you can see why Silent Witness has still got some life left in it.”
Harry Mount, The Telegraph
Immortal Egypt, BBC2
“It was a timely examination, in the sense that at least one of the US presidential candidates maintains that the pyramids were grain stores built by the biblical Joseph. I wish Professor Joann Fletcher could be president.”
Tim Dowling, The Guardian
“You couldn’t fault Fletcher’s passion or knowledge, which, like in her previous outing in Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings, was always accessible.”
Sally Newall, The Independent
When Ant and Dec Met the Prince: 40 Years of the Prince’s Trust, ITV
“The film lightly tackled how a prince can also be a man of the people, but it did sweep over other thorny issues. However, this was entertainment rather than exposé, so we instead had access to lots of royal tidbits.”
Alex Hardy, The Times
“When Ant and Dec Met the Prince was an outrageous piece of royal PR. Still, it was hard not to be charmed by Ant and Dec’s relaxed, unthreatening, mutually teasing style.”
Harry Mount, The Telegraph
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