Ackley Bridge; The Invisible Pilot; Resident Evil

“Just as a school that has long been outstanding can soon slide into requiring improvement if the wrong headteacher takes over, Ackley Bridge is not the show it was. The reduction of on-screen talent is significant: you can’t lose Amy-Leigh Hickman, Jo Joyner, Paul Nicholls, Adil Ray, Poppy Lee Friar, Liz White, Arsher Ali and Sam Bottomley and expect to carry on at anything like the same level. All the grit that made the show great has been replaced by pure soap.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“When it was announced that Top Boy star Ashley Walters had directed the opening two episodes of the new season of teenage soap Ackley Bridge, I got a bit carried away and pictured him bringing a king-size helping of gangland noir to sleepy, small-town Yorkshire, perhaps soundtracked by his old band So Solid Crew. But these two worlds did not collide and the Channel 4 series returned with its familiar and very watchable mix of relationship angst, social commentary and inter-generational conflict.”
Ed Power, The i

“Ackley Bridge is Grange Hill for the TikTok generation. The pupils are busy losing their virginity, signing up to post selfies on a site called AdultFanz, and whipping out their smartphones in class to cast votes in an online ‘Fit or not?’ poll of their female classmates. This all sounds vaguely terrifying, but try not to be alarmed. Ackley Bridge is a Hollyoaks-style soap in which all of these issues are tackled with a light touch – and if you think teenagers aren’t familiar with this stuff, then you don’t speak to many teenagers.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“This was far too cartoony, far too redolent of latter-day Grange Hill and modern-day Hollyoaks. When you think how well Channel 4 can do youth-skewed drama — remember the brilliant Misfits on E4? — you wonder why they continue to bother with this one.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“The first pair of episodes in this fifth series started at 10pm. The last one will conclude after midnight, in the small hours of Saturday morning. What’s the point of showing teen romances and playground spats at that time? C4 would do better to screen Ackley Bridge at 6pm, before Hollyoaks, instead of those interminable Simpsons repeats.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The sustained near-celebratory tone of the three-hour-long account feels increasingly odd. Makers Phil Lott and Ari Mark are content to leave it as a tale of derring-do, a kind of Man’s Own adventure story but a thousand questions and alternative accounts are clearly begging to be heard.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“It has much in common with the story of Barry Seal, which became an entertaining film with Tom Cruise, American Made. There are also echoes of Canoe Man, John Darwin. But the series is bogged down by the convoluted film-making, which involves a crew in 2021 reporting on the work of a crew from 2014, and uses footage from both. Like Betzner himself, the film-makers think they’re very smart, but the end result is messy.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The destination at which it arrives is B-movie nirvana. There are lots of ravenous zombies – technically humans whipped into a killer frenzy by a lab-made virus. And the ghoulish excitement is topped off with a delicious early set-piece in which heroine Jade (Ella Balinska) flees a giant rotting spider while trying to cross the Channel from Dover to Calais. Riotously ridiculous in other words – and great fun for those who like to switch off their grey matter before parking on the couch.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph