Desperate Measures; Ukraine’s War Diaries; The Dangerous Rise of Andrew Tate

“The basic pitch for Desperate Measures — Amanda Abbington robs a bank vault — was an improbable scenario before it had even started. From there, things became properly ridiculous with escalating events bolted one after another like Meccano. Is implausibility really a problem here, though? This four-parter is not purporting to be a thought-provoking treatise on social inequity. Rather it’s the kind of pacey thing you keep watching on a quiet February night, even aware that you’ll have forgotten it by the weekend.”
James Jackson, The Times

“All this melodrama calls for some extreme acting, and Abbington excels at high emotion. She sweats, she shrieks, she sobs, and she always stays convincing. Also excellent is Gabor Nagypal as Kristof, in a polo neck and a double-breasted jacket that makes him look like a villain from the superb French crime drama Spiral.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Abbington brought an everywoman forcefulness to her portrayal of the put-upon Rowan. But her compelling depiction of a woman on the edge wasn’t enough to rescue a ho-hum thriller that in places felt all too predictable.”
Ed Power, The i

“The twisting plot was built to hook but I didn’t believe it for a second. Abbington, however, delivered a strong, nuanced performance: wry, warm, steely yet sympathetic.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph

“A Panorama film so sobering the cumulative effect was like being slapped in the face by a cold flannel. The video diaries of five Ukrainians, filmed on their phone cameras over the past 12 months, it gave you some idea of how it must feel to live under the threat of a bomb incinerating the building you’re in at any given minute.”
James Jackson, The Times

“It’s difficult to grasp that the footage in Panorama: Ukraine’s War Diaries, much of it shot with bodycams on the front line as shells exploded all around, documents a war happening in Europe right now. Those caught up in it struggled to believe it could be happening, too. The sense of unreality was magnified by old-fashioned graphics of maps, with ink blots spreading where the fighting was most intense. We seem to have reverted to the visual language of warfare in the 20th century, as well as the tactics and the tanks.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“What we learn over 45 often literally punchy minutes is that the market for misogyny is virtually limitless. Even if you feel you know this – perhaps because you have moved through the world as a woman for more than, say, 30 minutes – it is still quite something to be brought up against it in as pure a form as that which Tate offers his acolytes.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian