TV Critics: Penny Dreadful; Philip Roth Unleashed; Happy Valley

“Penny Dreadful is a Gothic adventure full of allusions to the greats of literary horror”.
Jonathan McAloon, The Telegraph

“Take a ladleful of Bram Stoker, a dash of Dorian Gray, a soupcon of Mary Shelley; add a few hundred gallons of gore and boil furiously”.
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“A gripping, over-arching story line was missing from last night’s episode. Luckily, there’s still time for it to emerge from the shadows”.
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“From this pilot it is evident Logan knows how to make us civilians jump, and how to flatter the fans of gothic”.
Andrew Billen, The Times

“What was intriguing was looking back over the various controversies that arose during Roth’s career – that he was a filth-monger, a self-hating Jew, a misogynist – and remembering that there was a time when novels had the power to stir up these kind of squalls at all”.
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“Most of the material and the game of matchy-matchy between the art and the life was familiar even to me, a non-ardent fan, and some absences glaring”.
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Although the film, part one of two, had the usual Imagine merits of fantastic archive use and intimacy with its subject, it also had a habit of withholding information”.
Andrew Billen, The Times

“The Bafta for Best Actress at the 2015 awards seems destined to go to Sarah Lancashire for Happy Valley – every bit as gripping, emotional and shocking as Colman was in Broadchurch”.
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“If my front room had been a place to jump to my feet and cry “Bravo!”, I’d have done it at this, a reminder of what heights BBC drama can hit”.
Matt Baylis, Daily Express