TV Critics: Ripper Street; Wonders of Life; A Great British Air Disaster; Wild Arabia; Beat The Ancestors; Top Gear; Mr Selfridge

“It was heavily stylised, some of the lines were delivered in an almost comically portentous am-dram style, along with furrowed brow and anguished looks. You would not necessarily go out of your way to see it, but it was fun, and amid the ‘tasteful’ gore a reason to be sanguine: a second series will follow this time next year.”
Philip Reynolds, Daily Telegraph

“It has taken me eight weeks to fathom exactly what Ripper Street is. It was not, to start with, about Jack the Ripper, yet the slashing of female bodies continued at an almost gratuitous pace. There was the problem of what American surgeon Captain Jackson was doing in the show beyond making it of interest to US buyers. Undoubtedly, too, the language was a barrier, for Warlow writes ornate pastiche Victorian dialogue… The series has its faults, but it has wit and conviction. Above all it has Matthew Macfadyen, who is terrific.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“In the last of his series, Cox addressed himself to what makes the planet home, not just to organisms advanced enough to make five-part television programmes about the mysteries of life but to everything else as well… And, as in preceding episodes, his explanation was a captivating combination of introductory-level chemistry and physics and reverence for the facts of the world.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The science was all very gripping (inasmuch as I could follow it) but what really stuck in the mind was that should you be fortunate enough to be a favourite of the BBC, a ticket to exotic destinations across the world is yours.”
Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express

“This was excellent stuff, as gripping as any thriller.”
Philip Reynolds, Daily Telegraph

“This is a good detective story, cheap reconstruction notwithstanding.”
Sam Wollaston, the Guardian

“As usual, the pictures are extraordinary but the prose is a bit more difficult to take, alternating as it does between bombast and misapplied cliché. Describing the escape strategies of the jerboa the narrator said this: ‘He has one last trick up his sleeve… hairy feet!’ Not really up his sleeve, surely, even if jerboas wore jackets? Just once it might be nice to see the ‘making of’ sequence that now concludes many natural-history films feature someone sweating away at a word processor and trying to get the commentary to match the quality of the images.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Beat The Ancestors is a kind of Scrap Heap Challenge meets Ken Follett’s World Without End. It is actually presented by SHC’s Dick Strawbridge, a man whose walrus moustache is almost as wonderful as his surname (part soft fruit, part castle entrance). I like shows like this because they bring in people from the fringes, put them under the spotlight. Medieval weapons experts, battle reconstuctors, and people who have brilliant old-fashioned skills, such as casting bronze, and know about things such as ‘windage’.”
Sam Wollaston, the Guardian

“Anyone over the age of 65 may have fidgeted in their seats at some of these jokes. But even for a show which has never exactly shied away from sending up clichés for cheap laughs, this was undoubtedly a tour-de-force in the art of the stereotype.”
Andrew Marszal, The Telegraph

“The department store saga always looks as if it is about to expire. The plots reinforce the impression… The dialogue refers not at all to the period… And then there is brash, boring Selfridge himself. Impersonating him, Jeremy Piven is not terrific.”
Andrew Billen, The Times