Breathtaking; The Way; Killer Crocs with Steve Backshall

“I seem to have given a lot of five-star reviews lately but what can you do when television is as breathtakingly good as Breathtaking? There have been other Covid dramas but few make you feel like you’re actually there, immersed in those chaotic, claustrophobic, hellish wards during the pandemic’s rampant early days, with patients gasping for breath and medical staff not even provided with proper PPE so wrapping themselves in bin bags, then being fobbed off with blithe government spin when raising their very accurate concerns. Shameful.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“With the three episodes running on consecutive nights, this promises to be an increasingly distressing account of the most uncertain and frightening few weeks in recent British history. It’s impossible for one drama to convey everything that was going on – entire industries facing sudden collapse, millions of families coping with the closure of schools, millions more unable to see loved ones in care homes, the toll on mental health and all the seismic disruption of lockdown. It will be a long time before we come to terms with the full nightmare. This drama, by depicting medical and bureaucratic battles on the Covid front line, and not merely indulging in cheap political point-scoring, is a step in the right direction.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The first episode is unrelenting, with Johnson’s hollow words echoing out over chest compressions and plunging stats. This is emotionally challenging television. Many sequences take place in real time with the camera casting its aghast gaze helplessly around at the chaos. The attention to detail is unparalleled, from the scuffs on the walls to the red imprints of mask outlines on faces. That authenticity carries into the performances: I felt like I was watching genuine patients and caregivers (at least to this layperson – only those who were there can truly speak to the accuracy of the drama).”
Rachael Sigee, The i

“You can do more with much less, as Jack Thorne’s 2021 Help, set in a care home with Jodie Comer as the last carer standing, proved. By the end, despite great performances from the whole cast, Breathtaking feels more like a cathartic rush for the writers, rather than something that deepens our understanding of what doctors and patients – and to some extent what we all – went through.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“As a polemic against the Government’s woeful failure to equip the NHS for the Covid pandemic, Breathtaking (ITV1) has power. But as a television drama, it’s weak. Adapted from a 2021 non-fiction book by palliative care doctor and ex-journalist Dr Rachel Clarke, it is so caught up in the fierceness of its message that it forgets the basics of hooking an audience.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“The Way is about how and why we tell certain stories, but it’s also about much more concrete, recognisable concepts – abuse of power, xenophobia, industrialisation, the ties we have to other people (whether we like them or not). In grappling with such big ideas in such an experimental format, it inevitably becomes a little muddled at times. But the drama’s willingness to take big swings should be applauded, and the cast provides a stellar showcase of Welsh talent. Atmospheric, ambitious and unlike most other weeknight dramas – at least The Way charts its own path, even if there are a few stumbles along the way.”
Emily Watkins, The i

“You can either make a visually interesting piece like that, or you can ask your audience to become emotionally involved with your story, but you can’t have both. It just doesn’t work, because one takes away from the other. There are two fine performances here, from Howells and Rhodri, but they’re fighting to get past everything else.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“It is a bravura opening episode – powerful, confident, ambitious, confrontational and unexpected. It conjures precisely the feeling of a town on the edge, a tinderbox for the powder keg that is an increasingly divided Britain as a whole. Then it pushes things a little further and if you squint just a tiny bit, you could be looking at the future. Maybe even a blueprint, if you were so minded. It feels like a drama fully in the tradition of Bleasdale, Loach, Alan Clarke and Jimmy McGovern, and if it occasionally falls victim to the last’s tendency to agitprop, that still leaves it head and shoulders above the usual fare.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“There are good performances from Callum Scott Howells as Owen and Mali Harries as Dee, but a criminal lack of Sheen, who appeared only as a “ghost” in a high-vis jacket. The opening was impactful — a man self-immolating on the street after his son was killed in a steelworks accident — but then it got bogged down in an identity crisis: a sound political narrative on the one hand, and red monks and a “Welsh-catcher” modelled on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Child Catcher on the other. In short, I think it’s a good premise but trying to be too many things at once, thus feeling somewhat messy along the way.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Last seen snorkelling with whales, he is a naturalist who favours the brush with danger. He treats his role as educator with a modicum of seriousness – there was a light dressing of science and reportage. But really this show is about the money shot: the killer piece to camera with, also in the frame, an actual killer.”
Jasper Rees, Telegraph

“We were given a spectacular viewpoint by outstanding drone images, soaring over the basking crocs that looked, from high above, like the little lizards you might spot in the English countryside. The drone also picked up the boat of a poacher, trawling with nets and snares to catch crocodiles for the illegal meat, medicine and fashion markets — croc skin fetches high prices, as does oil from their fatty tissue. Steve’s camera crew were able to direct rangers to the poachers’ hideout, and their equipment was seized. It was a small victory in an ongoing war.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail