Piglets; Britain Behind Bars; McDonald & Dodds

“Piglets was created in large part by the team behind Smack the Pony and Green Wing, and you can see the idiosyncratic ghosts of both shows in the attempts at surreality and absolute silliness. But here they don’t quite come off, and instead just make you feel embarrassed and sad. By the end of the first couple of episodes you are longing for Piglets to stop pulling its punches and embrace the absurdity, or to cut its losses and settle into ordinary sitcom territory. As it is, it falls between two stools and lands with a bit of an uncomedic splat.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“The show has its amusing moments, particularly the scenes between the trainer (Ukweli Roach) and his ex (Callie Cooke), but overall it is pretty weak stuff. Too often it mistakes crudeness for humour.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Gripes aside, this is a proper sitcom, a sign of renewed faith in funny from ITV as well as a general industry move away from emotional journey shows led by a comics on rollerskates or with mascara streaming down their face. At times the jokes feel a little forced, and you can see some of the punchlines coming, if not a mile off, certainly a few feet away. But that’s a teething problem, one that in this context we can perhaps blame on the overenthusiasm of the new recruits. For the most part this is clever, rude, decidedly weird and sharply funny. Very like Green Wing and, thankfully, very unlike a lot of recent ITV comedy.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Perhaps it is unfair to judge Piglets against Green Wing, but the series invited those unfavourable comparisons. The quirky editing nodded to Green Wing’s arresting visual style, using split screens instead of playing with speed, while its jaunty soundtrack called back to the former’s perfectly weird Jonathan Whitehead score. The difference is that Green Wing made its characters utterly believable, peculiar though they were. In the self-conscious Piglets, no-one feels like a real person despite the actors clearly giving it their all. For a new series to feel this stale compared to one made two decades ago is nothing short of criminal.”
Rachel Sigee, The i

“Piglets looks like a rush job. The characters are underdeveloped, their relationships undercooked. The comedy is puerile and intermittent; too many of the jokes are missing a proper punchline. From The Thin Blue Line to Black Ops, it’s proved difficult to make an effective television comedy about the police – and Piglets does nothing to change that.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent

“Even though Britain Behind Bars: A Secret History hasn’t shifted my stance on the matter, presenter Rob Rinder’s approach to the subject leads to a far more interesting programme than my own hand-wringing liberalism would have done. The lawyer and broadcaster has a fundamental belief in the legal system and sees these institutions as serving a crucial purpose – but comes to it with curiosity and empathy for inmates past and present.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian

“Does prison work? In the debate about its capacity to deter – both then and now – an articulate collection of ex-convicts make a helpful and sometimes light-hearted contribution. The middle episode, focusing on capital punishment, digresses into the personal as Rinder, who lost family in the Holocaust, interrogates his feelings about the ethics of execution. This strikes a rare false note. His measured and deeply thought series isn’t about crime’s victims but its culprits.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph

“Five minutes after finishing the latest episode of McDonald & Dodds I’d forgotten the finer points of the plot and the names of half of the characters. Actually, if I’m honest, I kept forgetting them while I was watching it. But that’s the thing about this series: it operates on good vibes rather than brilliant plotting and characterisation. It’s just a pleasurable watch, which is quite a rare thing to find these days so I’m not knocking it.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Yes, it’s formulaic, but it’s also terrific fun. As the likes of Midsomer Murders grows ever staler, this should keep ITV’s cosy-crime viewership content for years to come. Providing, of course, that an actor of Jason Watkins’s calibre is happy to stick around.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i