TV Critics: Room at the Top; Mrs Biggs; Doomsday Preppers

“One of the good things about Room at the Top is that it doesn’t ever feel casually superior to the times it depicts. Another is that the script is full of lines that have an unexpected bounce… I’ve watched this twice now and it looks even better the second time round.”
Tom Humphreys, The Independent

“The script is pared-down and pacy; there are none of the longueurs you might associate with dramatising postwar tedium. In fact, it’s absolutely gripping, and quite sexy with it.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Room at the Top made me nostalgic for a BBC4 before the money really ran out.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Where’s the point in doing a modern adaptation? The Sixties film would have sufficed.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Mrs Biggs has been pretty nicely done, though I can never entirely shake a doubt about whether it should have been done at all… Might its portrait of Ronnie perhaps be a tiny bit starry-eyed and adoring?”
Tom Humphreys, The Independent

“Mike has three months’ worth of food for 10 people and an arsenal of weapons. He thinks he’s thought of everything, but he’s only ready for one kind of societal collapse. Riley Cook, meanwhile, is preparing for the north pole and the south pole to switch places. Other preppers are gearing up for ‘the total destruction of the power grid’ and ‘the Yellowstone supervolcano’. The show does little to contextualise all this paranoia. If anything, it legitimises it.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian