TV Critics: Madeley Meets the Squatters; Jamie & Jimmy's Food Fight Club; A Young Doctor’s Notebook

“Like a goodly proportion of the nation, I have always rather liked Madeley, and the encounter was at least intriguing. He can out-Partridge Alan for bons mots, sure, but there’s a lack of cynicism about his goofiness that is refreshing and rather charming in ways that are not always immediately explicable.”
Esther Addley, The Guardian

“Madeley Meets the Squatters turned out to be a tale of wide-eyed innocence bumping up against the realities of the world, the innocent in this case being Richard Madeley, who seemed keen to persuade us that his chief virtues as a reporter are ignorance and naivety… He was less revolted by squatting by the end of the film, but for most viewers the unintentional Partridgean comedy would have been the best reason for watching.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Madeley is who Alan Partridge would have been if Alan Partridge had been successful. There were many happy moments, including the mild offence he took when someone assumed he was wearing his best jeans (“these are not my best jeans”) and when someone else called him Mr Medley. Madely Meets surely has a series in it, and with Mid Morning Matters off air at the moment, could ITV please get on with it.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Madeley focused too much on ownership, and less on the rights and privileges of the society these squatters wanted to reject. The ones in my area don’t wreck houses or hold wild parties but they do light and heat their homes with power they’re not paying for… They can beautify as many urban spaces as they like, plant allotments on every bit of wasteland, but if they’re taking things other people have to pay for then, sorry, they’re as crooked as the bankers.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“It felt rather like being whizzed around on a Southend rollercoaster while trying to stuff your face with a chocolate milkshake and chips, like those scouts on Jim’ll Fix It.”
Esther Addley, The Guardian

“Somehow the atmosphere of the fourth form hung over this whole mess of a show, which featured a spoof D-Day landing of some British cheese-makers on a French beach, cooking with testicles and celebrities trying to eat a burger on a rollercoaster. If its aim is to interest schoolboys in cooking, then fair enough. Stick it on at teatime, then, and stop bothering grown-ups with it.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“If you were to take a guess at what Daniel Radcliffe might look like 20 years from now, I’m not convinced you’d come up with Jon Hamm as your best shot. He’s about six inches taller, quite apart from anything else… So it’s mildly startling to find them playing the same man… Setting aside uncertainties, it’s been very nicely done… But I still can’t work out why it needs two stars in it rather than one.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The Young Doctor’s Notebook is a quirky little thing that the BBC might once have found room for on one of its minority channels… But there is, I don’t think, any BBC channel niche enough for a beautifully written oddity like this… The production arrived under the Sky Arts Playhouse label, and it looked theatrical. On television, theatrical occasionally works.”
Andrew Billen The Times