TV Critics: The Naked Rambler; Death in Paradise; The Search for Alfred the Great

“Guy Gilbert never quite discovered why a man would spend years in jail, and the time in between wandering the country without clothes, rather than live a quiet life and see his children grow up. I’d like to say that Gough presented a mystery wrapped in an enigma but I rather fear that’s just what he hopes people will say.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“A surprising and thought-provoking documentary that explored both the nature of this man and the reasons behind his peculiar protest.”
Ellen E Jones, The Independent

“What film-maker Guy Gilbert exposed in The Naked Rambler was much sadder than just a man with the most weather-beaten bottom in the land. Gilbert’s expert editing invited us to replace shallow assumptions with deeper reflections.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“When Gough refuses to put it away when passing a school at coming-out time, it’s hard not to lose patience and sympathy with him. Is he just an exhibitionist and a flasher? Does he have mental health issues (he refuses psychiatric assessment)? If the answer to either is yes, then this probably should never have been made.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Gough was no Rousseau, but it was hard to pin a mental-health problem on him either. Gilbert, having interviewed his mother, brother and astonishingly wise ex-wife, concluded that the former marine, ex-Moonie, sometime former devoted father, needed something to get up for in the morning. It was just that, unlike the rest of us, the first thing he does is get undressed.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“This is police drama as if the past 30 years or so of police drama had never happened. It’s Miss Marple, with coconuts. I know it’s not meant to be taken seriously, but it’s really not that funny either. Apart from Harry the green lizard, possibly the character with most depth here.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“I’m never sure why it is that episodes of this show always seem less convincing than a Poirot or a Quincy. Could it be, I wonder, the paradise bit? Try as they might, the actors can’t look like anything other than a bunch of actors having a jolly nice time on holiday.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Since The Search for Alfred the Great was essentially a 50-minute red herring with a ten-minute payoff, its producers were forced to fall back on several hoary staples of the genre. So we had lots of dedicated overselling by the presenter Neil Oliver, some hilarious jump-cutting between stills of coloured lithographs and bits of ruined stonework, and a man in chinos walking around in a forest to what sounded like the music from Gladiator.”
Tim Martin, The Telegraph

“This documentary was no King In The Car Park. Happily it was, despite Oliver’s clichés, a good history lesson about Alfred, a scholar who sparked a literary renaissance, saw off the Vikings, and helped to create England.”
Andrew Billen, The Times