Criminal Record; Tell Me Lies; Andes Plane Crash; Echo

“Alone, Cush Jumbo or Peter Capaldi can hold anyone’s attention. Together, squaring off as adversaries, they are mesmerising. Plot-wise, there is no new ground being broken here, although the intertwining of the past and present cases and their eventual unpicking is interesting enough. But the cleverness and subtlety with which so many questions are posed and issues teased out through the main characters are more than worth the price of admission.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Is Criminal Record as good as Line of Duty? Don’t be silly; Jed Mercurio’s masterpiece in TV tension had six series of 37 episodes to get it to the cultural phenomenon it became by 2021. But all the elements needed for a great, compulsive police drama are there: undercurrents of wrongdoing by those in power, exposed by an underdog copper against all the odds… with lots of action added in for extra oomph. If it was on a more mainstream channel, its success would be inevitable.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Slickly written to unveil lies and shifting perspectives, the series does manage to capture the magnified emotions of that time of life around the turn of your twenties, something that Normal People did so well. Here, though, with events set on a college campus, it can feel closer to an edgier version of The OC. In short, it’s very American, the people are awful and for many it’ll be hopelessly addictive.”
James Jackson, The Times

“The only question raised by the U.S. college drama Tell Me Lies is why anyone should care about a group of whiny, self-absorbed 18-year-old girls intent on pursuing miserable romances with whiny, deceitful boys. They all have cars and designer wardrobes, and they’re too busy getting smashed on shots and champagne to do any studying.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“This is a survival story with no capitulation into savage anarchy à la Lord of the Flies or the TV show Yellowjackets. Instead it showed human nature to be noble in adversity. Which is an odd thing to say about a tale featuring cannibalism. A chilling tale (in every sense), yet oddly life-affirming too.”
James Jackson, The Times

“This three-part documentary consists of equal parts interview and reconstruction. Though the crash happened more than 50 years ago, and the survivors are in their 70s, these accounts have lost none of their harrowing intensity with retelling.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The show is significantly gnarlier than its Disney+ predecessors, with far bloodier violence than has graced the streamer before. But the show isn’t immune to the broad malaise that infects the MCU, namely the need to continually build an interconnected universe.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian

“Marvel appears desperate to pivot away from the full-throttle escapism audiences flocked to in the first place. Echo tries to break new ground. But in the end, it repeats the error committed by recent Marvel movies by locking into an underwhelming groove from which it cannot break free.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph