TV Critics: The Mimic; A Very British Wedding; Insect Worlds; Food Glorious Food

“I’m not laughing very much. And to be honest I don’t always know who Terry Mynott’s character is being when he’s doing his impersonations (Morgan Freeman good, Ronnie Corbett less so). And the whole thing is really just a vehicle for his impressions. Nor do I really buy his loser image – he looks like someone who’s charismatic and handsome trying to be less charismatic and handsome by doing something weird with his mouth. But, in spite of all of the above, it’s not entirely unlikable. In a funny kind of way. Worth another look, certainly.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“The Mimic appears to have been built around the ability of its lead actor, Terry Mynott, to do impressions and there are moments when you wonder whether he provides a solid enough foundation. His Terry Wogan was very wobbly and his David Attenborough was a weird hybrid of Alan Bennett and Ian McKellen. Other impressions are so left-field they have to be visually signposted or cued up by a line of dialogue to make sure we get them… It’s a comedy of underachievement essentially, complete with marimba noodling on the soundtrack to signal the underlying pathos, but it has some lovely downbeat moments and funny silences where some comedies might strive (unsuccessfully) for a big guffaw.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Terry Mynott is playing a dull man, Martin Hurdle, a lowly maintenance operative who is also a brilliant impressionist. Mynott is good at both halves. His dullness is like Julian Barratt’s in The Mighty Boosh: understated and unattractive. He smiles like the horse in Picasso’s Guernica… There was dramatic development, too… But I don’t know… The set-up depends on the pathos of a lonely fantasist… If I wanted pathos I could sit at home alone watching second-rate comedies on television.”
Christopher Howse, The Telegraph

“This is a show in which a bloke does funny voices, some of them recognisable as take-offs of famous people, others needing a lot of hints. A pecualiar sort of sketchy embryo plot is strung around the series of impressions, perhaps to make up for the fact that a lot of the impressions aren’t very good… An absolute dog’s dinner of an idea, if ever there was one.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Were it not for the mimicry and the fact Martin Works for Celpharm, it would be hard even to recognise this as a comedy. Yet there is something in the idea of exploring the loneliness of the man of a thousand voices.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“Dav and Kami can’t see each other for the six weeks leading up to the big day; she makes Indian sweets and blubs, before being rubbed in turmeric. You know what, though, a bit of turmeric isn’t enough. Just about everybody’s got someone making Indian sweets in their family now, haven’t they? That’s sort of the point of the series: this is totally normal in this country. It doesn’t make it either fascinating or entertaining television.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“The programme itself was very sweet, notionally about nuptial traditions and religious practices but actually about the universal emotions that tend to well up at a wedding, not all of them uncomplicated.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Ultimately the documentary remained too much on the surface, leaving us to take for granted the fact that the Sikh ceremony, because of its unfamiliarity, was ‘spiritual’, that the Latvian/Ukrainian wedding, because of its more familiar elements, was just a knees-up. Despite a lack of depth, we must be thankful that this documentary was not another Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, which, as a combination of stereotype and reality TV, was offensive.”
Christopher Howse, The Telegraph

“In a strange way this close-up look at Punjabi and Latvian-Ukrainian wedding rituals reminded us what British weddings used to look like and what purposes they used to serve… Rather than celebrating themselves and their tastes, both couples were recognising something bigger than themselves: the cycles of nature, the community, birth and death.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Insect Worlds seems to be mainly about dazzling us with statistics and very big numbers: 22 million driver ants, trillions of lake fly larvae, half a million flies in every patty (mmm), silk worms increasing their weight 10,000 times, a commercial value of 300 million… Stop it! It’s giving me a headache.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“What has gone wrong with Food Glorious Food? The answer is not obvious. Its third outing was beautifully filmed, featured some vivid amateur chefs, and contained one story of virtue to bring tears to the eye as surely as a chopped onion… The show has elements of Antiques Roadshow, The Great British Bake Off and, obviously, MasterChef. What it wholly lacked was originality… The ingredients are there, but Cowell will wait a long time to see this confection rise.”
Andrew Billen, The Times