Fear; Imagine: The Academy Of Armando

“Fear is a stylish, intelligent take on a story that has been told before but not often so well.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“It was certainly brave of writer Mick Ford, adapting a German novel, to steer Fear away from the stalker horror story it appears on the surface. What you get instead is a rather half-baked family drama which centres, as far as it centres on anything, on what it means to be a man. On the plus side, Martin Compston does a good job of making Martyn a hard-to-love have-a-go hero, bouncing between jolly family man and angry revenge mode in the blink of an eye.”
Keith Watson, The Telegraph

“Despite the illogical story, the acting is decent. Compston is an old hand at throwaway thrillers like this and remains a reliable source of emotion – usually anger – throughout. And while he’s not given much to do other than hunch over computers and mutter to himself, Solly McLeod does his best to move Jan away from caricature and turn him into something a little more three-dimensional. Fear’s biggest transgression is how it fails to do justice to a perfectly solid idea for a thriller. False accusations of any kind are a terrifying threat, yet this series wastes time with plotlines and extraneous characters who add nothing to the eventual laughable denouement.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Imagine: The Academy of Armando is one of the least self-reverential in the canon. It is certainly one of the funniest, brimming with clips from his many shows – a five-star buffet of top-tier comedy moments from The Day Today and Alan Partridge to the sublime The Thick of It.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“To its credit, Imagine attempted something a little more intricate than straight hagiography, telling Iannucci’s story but trying to show his method (‘quicker, shorter, funnier’; are his watchwords), how it all fits with his world-view (dark absurdity) and his sphere of his influence (absolutely massive). A deft combination of the three left you in no doubt at the end of the hour that Iannucci is the foremost satirist of our time.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“Imagine: The Academy Of Armando was highly entertaining and occasionally revealing, but exactly the sort of programme that the creator of The Thick Of It and The Death Of Stalin would normally enjoy poking fun at.”
Roland White, Daily Mail