TV Critics: The Poison Tree; Little Crackers; Inside Claridges

“Get out the I-Spy Book of Thriller Tropes and you’ll be ticking off the boxes in fine style within seconds. Mysterious call in the middle of the night? Tick. Distorted flashbacks to the youthful crime that has come back to haunt our protagonist? Tick. Ominous figure who appears on the horizon but has vanished when you look back again? Tick, tick, tick.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“They – the characters, the words they say – are not so real. I don’t really believe them, or become involved with them, or care much about them. There’s a lack of depth, an ITV drama-ness about it. As a thriller it works, though – it’s intriguing, gallops along. I want answers to those questions, to know what those secrets are, who did what exactly, and why.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“It has all the ingredients of an intriguing thriller and yet I find myself entirely not intrigued by any of it. The cast act out their parts as naïve young students with as little conviction as they later portray being murderers and ex-convicts as parents. As if to compensate for the lack of heat being given off by the main pair, the villains of the piece seem to go overboard, almost to the point of pantomime.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Baby, Be Blonde was an innocent affair, as guileless as a teen-magazine photo-romance… But I still found it tricky to buy the notion of the hottest young snapper on the block doing a shoot for a knitting pattern catalogue.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The film, directed by Joanna Lumley, looked lovely: as we now expect from all Little Crackers, and especially one set in a world where your success is dependent largely on your hair. It felt a bit slight, but I don’t think that’s anyone’s fault: more a symptom that 15 minutes hardly feels long enough.”
Alex Hardy, The Times

“Inside Claridges is the character drama I’d like Downton Abbey to be. It’s certainly the best recruitment advert that the hotel could hope for… The director Jane Treays played it all with a beautifully understated hand and light-touch humour.”
Alex Hardy, The Times