Joe Lycett’s United States of Birmingham; Andor; Who Do You Think You Are?

“It is the daftest of conceits held together by Lycett’s charm and wit. He cuts his cuttingness with warmth and modulates neatly in accordance with his interviewees’ needs without becoming boring or patronising. His other programmes have had worthier goals as part of his work as a comedian-activist, helping to draw attention to such matters as the sewage crisis, greenwashing by big companies and various consumer rights issues, but the man has earned the right to a little jolly across America in the pursuit of lighter entertainment.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“With the headlines currently full of horror stories about the Second City’s grim state thanks to those pesky strikers, I can’t think of a better time for Joe Lycett to present his delightfully daft new travelogue, in which he visits some of the 13 places in the US that share the name. This isn’t Palin. But it’s good-hearted fun, and if you’re a Brummie too, you might just understand why he’s doing it.”
Poppie Platt, The Telegraph

“Sky’s Joe Lycett’s United States of Birmingham is an apparently frivolous and yet weirdly edifying and gently revealing series in which the Brummie comic journeys around America (and very briefly Canada) in a campervan. This is, of course, a particularly weighted time to be making documentaries about small-town America. In a Maga world, many of the things that once seemed curious but essentially harmless about the place – the cultural conservatism, the proud insularity, the implacable exceptionalism – now don’t land quite so comfortably. However, oddly, this is partly why Joe Lycett’s United States of Birmingham works… and why Joe Lycett works in general.”
Phil Harrison, The Independent

“For all his snide jokes, Joe clearly wants to be popular. His garish outfits, all primary colours and pom-poms, are proof of that. He’s an old-fashioned entertainer at heart. An afternoon on the shooting range convinced him that his best option was to give in to America. By the time he’d visited two or three Birminghams, he was visibly moved by the warmth of his welcomes. He came to mock, and ended up having fun.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Under the hard-nosed stewardship of writer Tony Gilroy, Andor bins the magic and myth and replaces it with the reality of anti-fascist struggle, where the good guys are ready to risk their lives for freedom. It’s the Star Wars spin-off with the strongest claim to being a proper drama – but, in season two’s opening triple bill, it shows it can do sly, wry comedy too.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“After a tentative explanatory opening, the finale of this first lot of episodes hits a crescendo, cutting between a wedding and various murders like The Godfather in space. With this showrunner Tony Gilroy hits his stride, both in storyline and setting. Despite a bigger budget, the show still feels organic and lived-in.”
Jonathan Dean, The Times

“The series gets off to a bafflingly terrible start. Beginning one year after the events of the first, in which smuggler and thief Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) reluctantly became part of the Rebel Alliance, the opening three episodes are so lacklustre and slow that you suspect Gilroy has been watching too much of the other spin-offs. Start with episode four and you’ll be well-rewarded.”
Chris Bennion, The Telegraph

“Sometimes the material is so thin in Who Do You Think You Are? that I’m amazed they manage to stretch it out to a BBC hour. With Andrew Garfield, the Spider-Man actor, the opposite applied. I imagine they struggled to fit it all in. This was an epic story spanning extremes: success and Hollywood glamour, valuable art and the foulest evil. I can’t recall any WDYTYA? episodes that have taken us from a Nazi extermination camp to an Oscar-winning film and Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner clothes shopping in Beverly Hills.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“There’s always a danger when an actor appears on Who Do They Think They Are? that you suspect the subject is playing the part of themselves in their own life story. And there were times when Garfield seemed to be over-egging the emotion, the reaction to tales of his ancestors’ suffering a little ahead of the game. But then possibly that’s because by now we are very familiar with this programme’s template.”
Keith Watson, The Telegraph

“The relative fame of the subject has never dictated the success of an episode. Instead, it is whether their particular ancestry actually throws up anything interesting – and what it reveals about the descendent in question. Thankfully, Garfield’s episode proves a winner in both categories. Not only does his family history prove both tragic and unexpectedly Hollywood-adjacent, but Garfield is an open book of overflowing emotion: earnest, endearing and easily moved.”
Rachel Sigee, The i