TV Critics: The Syndicate, What Do Artists Do All Day?, Edwardian Insects, CSI

“I can’t imagine what possessed Kay Mellor – or the BBC – to think it would be a good idea to rehash this story so soon after its first outing… It wasn’t that the show was desperately poor; it was just terribly familiar. I felt as if I knew the set-up and how each character’s storyline was likely to play out within seconds of meeting them. If there are surprises to be found in the later episodes, I’m not sure I will still be around to catch them.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“The cast boasts Alison Steadman, Mark Addy and Jimi Mistry, but Siobhan Finneran as Mandy commanded every scene she was in. Having for too long played the one-dimensional O’Brien in Downton, Finneran was virtually unrecognisable here as a complex woman adored by her patients yet despised by her husband. Mellor uses the lottery as a truth-seeking device and Finneran knew exactly how, upon impact, to explode her character’s suppressed thoughts.”
Andrew Billen, The Times

“If we follow the pattern of last year’s series (and it’s odds on we will), each of the next five episodes will follow the fortunes of each individual member of the syndicate and there are two particularly promising storylines ahead… We have all the ingredients of a thoroughly engrossing drama. Can’t wait.”
Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express

“Apart from one survivor from the previous series (Denise, implausibly hired as an adviser by the lottery company), Mellor has gone for a new set of numbers – a fresh syndicate of hospital colleagues to discover just how corrosive and troubling good fortune can be… Mellor’s first episode was largely concerned with getting the ticket back – a narrative mostly played for comedy. But at the same time, she’s sketching in the dilemmas and desires that the big windfall will exacerbate.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“You, I, might have expected What Do Artists Do All Day? to be a 10-minute short film at best… This beautifully filmed half-hour – it could happily have been stretched to a full hour – documentary about Norman Ackroyd, whose etchings of Britain’s coastline hang in the Tate, Moma and the Louvre, proved how wrong you, I, can be… If this is how Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin spend their days, then they have my new-found respect.”
John Crace, The Guardian

“Both offered the deep pleasure of patient process and uncertain end result, with Ackroyd’s anticipation as he peeled back a print very similar to Charlie Hamilton James’s nervous excitement as he waited to see whether he’d successfully replicated Smith’s first big hit – a short film called The Acrobatic Fly…

What Do Artists Do All Day? wasn’t quite as instructive about the technology of print-making as Edwardian Insects was about Smith’s early attempts at time-lapse photography and microscopic close-up, but it shared the lovely sense of men completely consumed in perfecting their art.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“Fast-paced, brilliantly scripted and engrossing, yet again CSI hit the right note.”
Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express