TV Critics: Psychopath Next Door; House of Surrogates; New Tricks; The Wrong Mans; London Irish; Bake Off; Sarah Millican;

“This was a promising start to the female-led season. Underneath the extremes the writer Julie Rutterford has caught the rituals of girlie friendship really nicely.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“It’s not properly menacing, more Desperate Housewives than Misery. Jolly though… And then it just ends, suddenly, out of the blue. As if they miscalculated and suddenly realise that the allotted hour is up.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Anna Friel was clearly having a lot of fun as titular crazy lady Eve. She pulled up in her convertible, all dolled up like Barbara Stanwyck after a shopping spree in Next.… The casting of instantly sympathetic actresses Eva Birthistle (Waking the Dead) and Claire Keelan (The Trip, Nathan Barley) as Eve’s victims made her antics all the more gripping. So why did it come to such an abrupt end, with so many questions left unanswered? It was as if Eve had chopped off the final pages of the script with her plant-mutilating scissors.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“A remarkable and challenging documentary. House Of Surrogates investigated the £1bn trade in babies born to surrogate mothers in India, and offered no easy answers.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“This was a complex and thought-provoking film throughout… It didn’t push an agenda, merely pointed things out and let us wonder about them. Could this possibly be right? As long as rich and poor exist, it is hard to see what could stop it.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“If anyone came off badly here it wasn’t the surrogates – whose decisions, in the circumstances, seemed rational – or even Dr Nayna Patel, but the couples flying in from wealthy Western nations to collect their babies.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“The viewing figures will ultimately decide how well New Tricks has survived the changing of the old guard. But already it feels as if it’s had a shot in the arm, and all the fresh blood tranfused into its veins is giving this old dog a welcome new lease of life.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“New blood does not necessarily equal new life, simply new opportunities to waste acting talent on clunky reaction shots.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“I suspect that Corden and Mathew Baynton are more performers than writers. This feels like they’ve sat down together, chuckling at everything and chucking everything at it – their favourite movies, a bag of poo, an awful lot of themselves… I think they’re having a much better time than I’m having, and I’m not sure that’s how TV should be.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“It’s the utterly unheroic character of the heroes that keeps me hooked. Or the way our two heroes keep descending lower and lower in their own and everyone else’s estimation because the alternative is even worse to consider.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“London Irish probably cost about a 10th of what The Wrong Mans cost… But it’s about eight times better. Because it’s bold, and filthy, and a little bit anarchic… The Daily Mail hates it: that’s good enough for me.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Right from the start, the men seemed to have been cast at least as much for their foibles (geek Rob, vulnerable Toby) as for their ability with gluten. Well, now they’re all gone. And one thing we know for sure, at this point, is that the 2013 Bake Off will be won by a resolutely normal woman. Which seems to be what the producers wanted, all along.”
Neil Midgeley, The Telegraph

“Millican, like fellow chat hosts Graham Norton and Rob Brydon, is genuinely nice. She’s a bit bawdy, and you get the feeling she might not clean behind the fridge too often, but that’s her charm. Unfortunately, a charming interviewer is no good to anyone… There is nothing wrong with this sort of telly. It’s like a cup of cocoa at bedtime: sweet and warming. But the BBC should not be allowed to claim it as a chat show.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail