Elizabeth: A Life Through the Lens; Gods of Tennis

“Elizabeth: A Life Through the Lens is a slight, swift film that canters through 10 decades in an hour and seems, on the surface, to be a genuflecting biography full of nice photos. But within it is an occasionally fascinating analysis of how and why those pictures were created, illustrating a fundamental truth about the Elizabethan era: it was one long marketing campaign, trying to square the circle of making the British people love their queen without ever getting to know her.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Though there were plenty of nice photos of ‘the most filmed and photographed woman who ever lived’, it felt like we had seen them all before, along with the anecdotes, despite the best efforts of the talking heads. It’s all interesting, but it felt like a rather superficial cuttings job with little new to say.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Elizabeth: A Life Through the Lens featured some nice images and archive footage of the late Queen – who wouldn’t enjoy gazing once again at Cecil Beaton’s beautiful Coronation portrait, or seeing a clip from that lovely film in which she had afternoon tea with Paddington Bear – but otherwise had nothing to add. We had – rightly – a flood of tribute programmes when the late Queen died. If you’re going to put one out nine months later, it needs to have something new to say.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“In practice, it was just an excuse to revisit her remarkable life: from a first baby picture to that poignant final photograph of her standing in front of a roaring fire and looking very frail. There has been no shortage of royal television over the past few months, so a lot of this was very familiar. But there was the odd glimpse of something new.”
Roland White, Daily Mail

“This sizzling, fabulously entertaining documentary devoted a whole hour to Borg v McEnroe, which wasn’t enough really. They could have wrung at least another hour out of their on-court rivalry.
Carol Midgley, The Times