All Creatures Great and Small; Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker; Charlene White: Empire’s Child; The Love Trap; Sex, Love and Goop

“All Creatures is also canny enough to realise that if ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Its faithful rendering soon converted fans of the original adaptation. The Larkins has angered devotees with bafflingly clumsy changes - even binning Pop’s “perfick” catchphrase. All Creatures’ inclusive casting is sensitively done. In The Larkins, half of Littlechurch’s residents are racially diverse, which many viewers have found jarring. In summary, All Creatures is a prize thoroughbred, while The Larkins is a clapped-out donkey. It’s a salutary lesson in how to adapt much-loved literary properties and produce crowd-pleasing TV period drama.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph

“Every bit as good as the 1970s original, this serial has become better and more assured by the week. The writing, the cast and the sets are all exceptional. As much as we love the landscapes of the Dales and the animals, it’s the characters that make the stories timeless — most of all.” 
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail 

“However derivative the format, there was something immensely satisfying about watching skilled people go about their work. They may be amateurs, but the beds they crafted in the big build challenge (the equivalent of the showstopper) were admirable, with all sorts of complex woodworking techniques on show: curing, planing, bending, laminating. It’s definitely not a craft for the dilettante.”
Joe Clay, The Times

“Mel makes a gung-ho job of her solo stint, giving energy and sizzle to a format that could easily turn into an instructional video on joinery.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail 

“It was a transporting moment, bringing the programme to an emotional conclusion.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Disturbing too was the programme’s desire for us to believe that this came as a surprise to the women: those who didn’t meet that grisly fate were open-mouthed in shock (despite the fact they presumably all had to do health and safety checks and agree to the stunt). You can see why a gimmick was needed – the competition was otherwise utterly flat, with trumped-up rivalries and no interesting personalities to speak of. But it’s a grim sign of where things are heading.”
Barbara Speed, The i

“Gone is the wafty talk. It’s clitoral hood this, introitus that, and “Do you mind if I place my hand on your mons while we chat?” I doubt there was a single Bartholin’s gland left unstimulated anywhere in Santa Monica by the time they were done. It’s all rather brilliant, especially because there is remarkably little woo-woo compared to The Goop Lab, and most of that is confined to watching a “family constellations” therapy session in the penultimate episode.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian