The Tower; America’s New Female Right

“ITV1’s crime drama The Tower, which no longer features a tower but still stars Gemma Whelan as Met copper DS Sarah Collins, returned for a third series in fine fettle. I was slow to warm to these adaptations of Kate London’s crime novels, the first series seeming to have Line of Duty rather too obviously in its sights. But they’ve now evolved into one of the tightest and most assured of TV’s seemingly endless line-up of police procedurals.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“We’re now at series three and, despite Gemma Whelan’s best efforts, the law of diminishing returns has come into play. Though the original story lingers in the background like a bad smell, this latest outing for Collins and co plunges us into the tawdry world of zombie knives, gang warfare and bad Bulgarians. All desperately zeitgeisty, but don’t we get enough of that on the news? With precious little originality to offer on the subject and resorting to half-baked community meeting cries of ‘when are you [the police] going to stop this?’ – no explanation of how exactly that’s supposed to happen – the energy rapidly drains out of a thriller that’s decidedly short on thrills.”
Keith Watson, The Telegraph

“The show made a shaky start three years ago, when the only element helping it stand out from a plethora of police dramas was the orange anorak worn by its central character, DS Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan). But if her wardrobe hasn’t got any better, The Tower has. Set in south London and based on a trilogy of novels by former policewoman Kate London, the stories centre on a high-rise block where serious crime is endemic. Three gangs vie for control, with the teenage delivery boys all carrying zombie knives. No other crime serial depicts the rise of drug-fuelled knife crime so well, with such a clear understanding of the consequences for victims and their families.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It’s a fascinating subject that deserves attention and rigorous interrogation of all the factors at play, especially with subjects as bright, articulate and confident as these. What we get instead is a cheap, shoddy programme apparently thrown together in 10 minutes, presumably on the grounds that everything and everyone is so obviously awful and evil and bad-bad-bad that it is enough just to film them, show Layla Wright’s pained face occasionally and have her lob in a few wet questions to show that she is still listening and still on the side of right (which is, of course, left, not right).”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Layla Wright’s exemplary documentary exploring the rise of ultra-conservative influencers in their teens and twenties should be compulsory viewing, revealing how a substantial section of the electorate is feeling increasingly alienated. Wisely keeping her own views on a backburner until near the end, 27-year-old Wright set out to discover how and why women her age and younger in the US are rejecting hard-fought feminist advances in favour of championing the idea that the sole purpose of women is to be wives and mothers. And garnering millions of followers on social media by espousing those views.”
Keith Watson, The Telegraph