Grace; Sambre: Anatomy of a Crime; The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan

“My patience with Grace, already quite thin, snapped last year when it served up the story of a sadist in a black rubber suit who violated terrified women with a dildo. This same series has offered up other cosy tales, such as a man being buried alive in a coffin fitted with a camera so we could see him gasping and screaming for help. Grotesque television. But here’s the good news. Last night’s episode merely had two men tying up a 66-year-old woman, burning her with cigarettes and beating her so severely with a knuckle-duster that she later died in hospital. OK, I can see typing that out that it doesn’t sound like hugely good news. However, by Grace’s standards this was torture-lite. It was positively upbeat. Plus we didn’t actually see the beating on screen. Happy days!”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Based on the excellent novels by Peter James, Grace is a meticulously plotted serial made all the better by a brilliant cast. John Simm plays the fretful detective, conscientious and demanding of his team but equally willing to give praise and support — the opposite of the ‘maverick’ type who star in most crime dramas. Back in the 1950s, with police heroes like Gideon and Dixon, men like that were the ideal archetype. They’re out of fashion now.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Living near Brighton and familiar with the city, I had looked forward to Grace, ITV’s adaptation of Peter James’s best-selling novels, when they began in 2021. Not only was Endeavour writer/creator Russell Lewis on script duty, the excellent John Simm was to play the eponymous DS Roy Grace. But the first three series were a big disappointment. Could the fourth outing change my opinion of this sadly underwhelming Sussex-by-the-sea police procedural? Not on the evidence of the opening episode.”
Gerard Gilbey, The i

“The suspicion lingers that if it wasn’t for John Simm holding things together at the heart of the action, Grace would pretty quickly dissolve into standard cop drama cliché. As it is, Simm brings Grace believably to life, creating that rare TV beast, a genuinely likeable, largely quirk-free detective who never craves our favour.”
Keith Watson, Telegraph

“This is not an easy series to watch. It is distressing and uncomfortable. But it also stands as an important artefact of outrage, spotlighting the institutional failings and ingrained cultural misogyny that left the rapist at large for so long – and it is all the more affecting for taking its time.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“Sambre’s power comes from a portrait of a small, rural community that is resolutely unexceptional. Drab, even. It is directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, best known for The Staircase and the Oscar-winning Murder on a Sunday Morning. The Staircase, from 2004, is one of the defining true-crime documentary series. Lestrade is therefore well aware of what beats and clichés to avoid in Sambre for it to remain serious and focussed. Yet its intent – address and perhaps redress 30 years of societal failure to acknowledge rape victims; put a rocket under a culture of denial – seethes furiously throughout. The stories of the women who were forgotten are brought back to life, in what is the uneasiest of tributes.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“I get that it is Romesh Ranganathan’s shtick to be TV’s most inept detective but even for him the interlude involving the wooden skittles was a lameness too far. As he “probed” the 1978 death of Nancy Spungen, he used the crap skittles and some white tape to recreate the key suspects in her stabbing in a New York hotel room, chief among them the late Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious. But it went on too long and tried too hard to be “ironic amateurish”.”
Carol Midgley, The Times