“This – knowing from the off who the killer is – makes Allan Cubitt’s thriller a different beast from the usual. There is violence, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous. It’s more about what happens between the killings.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“We know he’s a killer before we discover the far more unsettling information – in the context of our genre expectations – that he’s a gentle daddy.  It seems a pity that, yet again, attractive young women have to be sacrificed for public entertainment. But at least the entertainment is more thoughtful than usual.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“It was very slick, very knowing and Anderson and Dornan were actually very good. But if there is a more Athena version of a serial killer out there, I’m yet to see it.”
Chris Harvey, The Telegraph

“It’s funny, fair, frank. And it still manages to highlight the very real issues of poverty in this country. Shameless for real, observing the unemployed.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“This was TV as a window into lives that most people in this country have no way of comprehending, and the makers had captured them in the raw. It wasn’t fun, but it was compelling and insightful.”
Chris Harvey, The Telegraph

“The wall wasn’t a demarcation between wilderness and semi-civilisation – a real life equivalent to the northern border in Game of Thrones – but a fortification with prosperity and settlement on both sides of it. Think Catterick, with togas and goatskin tents.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent