Bad Sisters; Hotel Custody; A Farm Through Time

Bad Sisters, Apple TV+

“Bad Sisters is wonderful. It is also superbly constructed, perfectly paced and brilliantly performed, with Horgan on top form as both writer and actor, surrounded by a cast who don’t put a foot wrong. Wittily directed (by Rebecca Gatward, Josephine Bornebusch and Dearbhla Walsh) and gorgeously shot, this is a fine addition to the growing collection of stories told unapologetically for, by and about women on mainstream television. Sorority takes many forms.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Directors Dearbhla Walsh and Rebecca Gatward make nice use of Dublin locations such as swimming spot the Forty Foot, and there’s the odd stylistic flourish such as whizzing along a film strip for the flashbacks. Plus, the opening titles are fabulously macabre: a domino rally of murder weapons, accompanied by a haunting cover of Leonard Cohen’s Who by Fire. But the show loses Horgan’s voice when it ventures into generic crime drama territory. It’s with kin, not killing, where she really slays.”
Marianka Swain, Telegraph

“It was obvious that Hotel Custody was going to take a “jovial” approach to covering the state-of-the-art, £14 million Birchin Way Custody Facility in Grimsby when it began with classical music then showed us the upbeat detention officers joking about their sex lives and handing round Haribo sweets. It was presented as all a bit of a lark, a sideways look at being slammed in a cell for GBH, being off your head on drugs or stealing a fountain pump from a garden centre.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Many detainees were released without charge after they’d sobered up. One philosophical officer remarked: ‘How they are living their lives, they think that is normal. What is normal nowadays?’ If we were meant to chuckle at all this, I couldn’t. It was just too depressing.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“We got lessons in sawing wood and sheep shearing. Goodman’s recognition of farmers’ heroic efforts during the war, which prevented us being starved into submission, were genuinely touching. That paired with lingering drone shots of the bucolic Tatton Park and rolling emerald fields (pre-drought, clearly) made for green and pleasant viewing – if not much more.”
Marianka Swain, Telegraph

“Rob and Dave could count themselves lucky to get any supper at all, because unlike the ladies they’d spent the day making a right muck of everything. Given a Fordson tractor, they were challenged to plough a straight furrow. One stalled the engine, the other couldn’t get it to stop. The result was more like a World War I trench.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail