TV Critics: Pinewood: 80 Years of Movie Magic; Protecting Our Foster Kids; Sense8

“This one-off doc only managed to hint at the epic scale of Pinewood’s greatness. The studio’s story might have been better served by a full two-hour slot on BBC Four, rather than being squeezed into an hour of prime-time TV.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“It could have been a dazzling whirl through the history of Britain’s greatest film studios. Instead, we got Jonathan Ross playing the tourist at a tatty theme park.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It is fantastic that the world’s best film-makers still choose Pinewood, and the documentary basked in its reflected technical brilliance. Something, however, about Ross’s approach made Pinewood’s acheivements look as a suburban as its location.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“If he had stuck to the 80 years bit of the brief, the result would have been a gong-winningly good bit of British cultural history. As it was, the chat-show side of Mr Ross won out and we got rather too many fawning PR interviews about the new Bond film.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“This deserves a big audience. Great TV – powerful, moving, human, real.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“There is currently an 8,000 family shortfall in foster placements across Britain, yet no one could accuse this doc of casting the experience in a misleadingly appealing light.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“This was documentary film-making at its most disturbing and acutely observed.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“Sense8 is exhaustingly po-faced and apparently oblivious to the distinction between challenging viewers and boring them witless. The disparate plot threads are presumably going to intersect across the remaining 11 dispatches. After this brain-freezing opening, will anyone be watching?”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“This is the worst kind of twaddle. The script should be sealed in an iron box and sank to the bottom of the deepest ocean. I’d suggest firing it into space but I’d be concerned that an alien race may stumble across it and then decide to destroy Earth in order to put us out of our misery.”
Chris Bennion, The Independent

“Sense8 is best regarded not as a TV series at all but a 12-hour film, albeit one many will walk out of. The first hour makes no sense at all and, with so many back stories, it is impossible to care for the characters.”
Andrew Billen, The Times