TV Critics: The People's Coronation; The Fall; Food Unwrapped; Simon Hopkinson Cooks; Mechanical Marvels

“Richard Dimbleby would have been proud; David did a great job in this programme and I can’t think of a better man to talk me through the next royal changeover. Nor a better broadcaster than the BBC on which to view it. Some might feel that the Beeb has been taken over by a bunch of lefties, but it’s during programmes like this that its establishment credentials come to the fore.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“The familiar mingled with the far off throughout this programme, which told the story, in an unfussy style, of how the masses viewed, celebrated, ate, drank and danced through a grandiose ceremony that would have once been the preserve of the privileged few… Part of the joy of this programme was just wallowing in the footage, particularly the manifold idiosyncrasies of the British at play. We saw the coronation being celebrated through sack racing, boxing, can-can displays and the parading of an ancient plaster cast giant through the streets of Salisbury.”
Ceri Radford, The Telegraph

“Our sense of Paul as something more than a mere monster is precisely why The Fall has so gripped its viewers… We’ve seen some of the things in The Fall far too many times already, the moments that turn us into mere voyeurs of female distress. But these things we haven’t seen before are why we keep watching.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The questions that are on the minds of presenters Jimmy, Matt and Kate aren’t the ones on mine. Can we eat mouldy bread, Jimmy wondered? Since no one I know has died from cutting off a blue patch and toasting the rest, I wasn’t surprised to find out it’s usually OK, though leaving a piece of bread for weeks until it’s unrecognisable is probably not a good idea.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“Simon Hopkinson Cooks was, I regret to say, composed mostly of clichés… I wish someone would come up with some alternative to the most tiresome cliché, which is the bit where the chef tastes the dish and goes into raptures… This relentless self-praise simply doesn’t honour the experience of all cooks (however good), which is that things don’t always turn out perfectly.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Presented by the pugnacious historian Simon Schaffer, this was a beautifully made and consistently fascinating account of how clockwork machines changed our relationship with technology. Starting with a 500-year-old clock that brought a sense of order to the Swiss city of Bern, the programme traced an engineering feat that culminated in 18th-century automata: mechanical figurines that could write, draw or even play the flute… From such stories to the evocative soundtrack and pithy commentary, this documentary was a precisely calibrated treat.”
Ceri Radford, The Telegraph