Freedom: 50 Years of Pride; My Life As a Rolling Stone; McDonald & Dodds

“A mishmash of cabaret, musical revue, documentary and oral history that attempts to be all things to all LGBTQ+ people, and just about pulls it off. It sounds messy, but it is surprisingly invigorating, and it captures some of the energy that has made UK Pride – in its various iterations – such a force.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“Freedom: 50 Years of Pride was a perfectly pitched feature-length documentary about half a century of LGBTQ+ activism in the UK, told by people who were on the frontline. It chronologically traced how a grassroots movement grew into the rainbow flag-waving, Mardi Gras-style celebration we know today. This was precisely the sort of bold but accessible, distinctly British programming that Channel 4 should be making.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph

“Is to the enormous credit of those behind Channel 4’s Freedom: 50 Years of Pride – the Oscar-nominated director Stephen Daldry and playwright Joe Robertson – that the film felt simultaneously celebratory, educational and urgent. Coherent storytelling, a broad range of interviewees and a willingness to confront recent problems struck just the right balance to honour five decades of queer activism.”
Rachael Sigee, The i

“We gather neither moss nor insight as we roll past the usual way stations in the Stones’ career: Mick and Keef’s drug bust, Brian Jones’s death, the Hells Angels bouncers killing four at Altamont. In 2022, we need a deeper dive than this. The Rolling Stones are ripe for critical reappraisal.”
Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian

“I would like to have seen more of this current, older Jagger reflecting on his extraordinary life in place of the many old clips from the Sixties and Seventies, which I feel I’ve seen so often before. But there was so much history to get through — six decades of it — that it had to move at a pace. And it did, a buzzy, zippy, thoughtful feast of a film with a well-selected collection of tributes and observations.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Sir Mick Jagger had no intention of permitting one word of criticism in his corporate hagiography. The 78-year-old lead singer of the self-styled Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Band In The World sat uncomfortably in a tight burgundy shirt, while fellow rockers lined up to chorus his praises.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Whoever dreamed up the murder plot for McDonald & Dodds was surely on mind-bending drugs. I don’t think I’ve seen a more ludicrously convoluted and impractical way to kill someone. But it was, as always, entertaining and escapistly daft.”
Carol Midgley, The Times