TV Critics: One Child; The Great Chinese Crash?; The New Yorker Presents

“Though at times rather preachy, it set everything up for what promises to be a captivating series.”
Catherine Gee, The Telegraph

“It was a decent sell – sheltered Westerner discovers her identity and the meaning of family in a strange, hostile forest of high-rises and low morals. But between the dramatic sequences, when Mei realises she has to act, the plotting and acting felt at times too worthy, too much like 10 years of New Yorker articles condensed into a script, for the plot to breathe by itself.”
Simon Usborne, The Independent

“Three minutes was all it took, three minutes of bleeps and blarps and strobing lights, before I was prepared to thoroughly dislike One Child … [It] promised to be something more, with suspense and a story — television you could watch without feeling that you ought to be sitting up straighter. Instead, it grated from the beginning.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Perhaps the ambition is the problem: the themes here are as big as they come. Corruption, state-sponsored executions, adoption, and how we belong to the people and places of our birth. I often feel this with global stories like One Child, particularly those told by people not from those places. Something gets lost in all the continent-crossing. The plot becomes far-fetched; too indebted to the politics to be true to the people and places.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“Although dramatically this is a clash between British domesticity and China’s epic struggle towards democracy, the writing confounds expectations … It is the detail, the abjuration of cliché, that makes One Child feel real.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“In some ways this story echoes the win-lose atmosphere of smog-choked Victorian London. It also chose, at times, the wobbly plots of Dickens … None of these details, though, distract from a distinctly compelling drama, as rich in action, risk and intrigue as it is in raw, human emotion.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Peston is brilliant at hyperbole. He has a knack for making the incomprehensible not just clear but suitably doom-laden.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“Like drowning in the venerable magazine’s elegance while sipping a Martini in midtown — all without the commensurate expense in time caused by its prolixity. That Harold Ross’s weekly tribute to East Coast values has become a television programme without losing its essence is a miracle.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Will the great American railroads run out before Michael’s collection of gaudily-colored linen jackets?”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“It pretends to be a dystopian fantasy about young pioneers reclaiming the Earth after a nuclear holocaust, but really it’s a high-school drama about a bunch of teenage friends … Mostly, it looks and sounds like a video game. But at least there’s no nightclub.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail