Brian Cox: How the Other Half Live; Oti Mabuse: My South Africa; Three Mothers, Two Babies and a Scandal

“Brian Cox’s outburst midway through How the Other Half Live had a scary ferocity to it worthy of the billionaire Logan Roy in Succession. You don’t get this sort of fierce honesty in the beige celebrity travelogues we’re constantly fed and it was refreshing. It was an excellent film made even better by Cox’s patent lack of interest in the ostentatious houses he looked around, his disgust at the statistics he read out and his anger in Miami, where immigrant workers who are the city’s cleaners and car-washers are being turfed out of their affordable homes so they can be ‘redeveloped’, probably into more luxury pads for the rich.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Cox is a great signing for Channel 5, and a commanding host. There’s a directness to him which meant you were never quite sure what he was going to say or do in this programme (the first of two instalments) exploring both sides of the wealth divide.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The difference between Whicker’s World and Brian Cox: How The Other Half Live is that the Succession star also found time on his journey to meet the super poor. Going back to Dundee, he met two cleaners who struggle to pay the bills. Their stories affected him so much that he ranted at the crew, wondering whether they should even be filming. He wasn’t so angry on meeting the super rich — more bemused. An encounter with great wealth can often be baffling.”
Roland White, Daily Mail

“Mabuse was an interesting tour guide for South Africa, visiting Robben Island with a former political prisoner, Thulani Mabaso, who told of the freezing cells and lack of blankets one moment and an ostrich farm run by white farmers the next. This wasn’t a deep dive into the history of apartheid, but the interesting perspective of a person who was, as she told Mabaso, ‘born free’ thanks to the sacrifices of heroes like him.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Oti Mabuse: My South Africa does have a lot of the tics and cliches of the genre but, because of where we are and who we are with, its sweet cosiness is deceptive. With the greatest respect to the Strictly Come Dancing audience, such a large fanbase may contain the odd person who would not ordinarily seek out a documentary about the lasting trauma and deep-seated political after-effects of apartheid, but who will tune in for what they think is a jolly travel film by that dancer they like. By the end of My South Africa, they will have an understanding of the nation’s painful racial problems that doesn’t go deep with detail, but does ensure all the main points are firmly underlined.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Oti Mabuse: My South Africa turned out to be more like South Africa: My Oti Mabuse. It was less about the country of her birth, and more about the former Strictly dancer and her family. The star of the show was Oti’s mother, who founded a nursery school in a township near Pretoria because she wanted to keep children off the streets. There was a wonderfully moving moment when mother and daughter danced together on the very floor where Oti learnt her first steps.”
Roland White, Daily Mail

“Three Mothers, Two Babies and a Scandal is a thoroughly gripping three-part documentary, though as it begins with a woman denying that she was ‘buying and selling babies’, it’s hard to see how this tale could have been anything but fascinating. It could, however, have been salacious, and it is a testament to the makers that it manages to be both engrossing as well as sensitive to all involved.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“The story was chaotic, and the documentary doesn’t quite get a handle on that chaos, spreading it over the episodes in a non-chronological way. There are plenty of twists and turns, of the kind now demanded in true-crime box sets (albeit the crimes here are mostly moral). No one comes out of this well, and the unregulated nature of the international adoption business is horrifying (the UK did step in to tighten the law in the wake of this case). Your only sympathy will be for the twins, shunted around four different homes in their first six months of life.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph