Count Abdulla; Blackadder; Britain’s Most Expensive Houses; Killer in Plain Sight

“Count Abdulla doesn’t always work. Playing with stereotypes can, after all, come dangerously close to setting yourself on fire. But it gains in confidence as it goes on. Thanks to Kaamil Shah’s deft writing, it mostly pulls off the high-wire act of being woke, funny, topical and really silly all at once.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“This first full broadcast of the lost pilot episode showed Rome certainly wasn’t built in a day. Because that pilot wasn’t great was it? The opening couple of minutes were airlessly cringeworthy, punchlines dead on arrival … Richard Curtis self-deprecatingly said he had originally shown it to friends — to total silence.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Well done to UKTV channel Gold, who could have done the annoying thing – breaking the episode into clips, interspersing footage with celebrity talking heads – but instead did it right by broadcasting the half-hour pilot in full. It wasn’t riotously funny, but there were seeds of a good show in there and a fun cameo from Alex Norton as a lusty Scottish warrior.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“If the purpose of the programme is to show how the other half live then it’s an easy watch. But it’s too uninspired to be Britain’s answer to Selling Sunset, and not truthful enough about the need to make sales in the estate agency business. As it is, the show plays out like an advert for Sotheby’s.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The feng shui master floated through the rooms in a semi-trance, smiling benignly, like the Dalai Lama in a Savile Row suit. Sotheby’s took all this timeless wisdom quite seriously. I’m not sure narrator Don Warrington did, but then, his voice always drips with sophisticated cynicism, even when he’s not playing the world-weary police commissioner from Death In Paradise.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Most of this detail we already knew. However, Lucy Osborne’s cool-headed, thorough analysis of the lack of police checks on its own staff and a possible cover-up culture should be compulsory viewing for every force.”
Carol Midgley, The Times