“Perhaps it’s age or perhaps it was the shock of the pandemic, but this is a kinder, gentler Gordon Ramsay”
“His show is quite good. OK, when I say ‘good’, I obviously mean within the parameters of a deathly Identikit format in which contestants are split into teams, everyone says how amazing it is to be there, inter-contestant bitching commences and someone is told that they will be ‘leaving the competition today’ (yawn). But it’s certainly better than the BBC game show he hosted last year. Dare I say it, it is very watchable, not least because it all took place on a lovely beach in Cornwall as opposed to there being a group of besuited narcissists in a corporate boardroom, and the contestants seemed to be nicer people who knew about food.”
Carol Midgley, The Times
“Perhaps it’s age or perhaps it was the shock of the pandemic, but this is a kinder, gentler Gordon Ramsay. After making the contestants jump off a cliff into the sea, for no reason I could fathom, Gordon divided them into three teams to run food shacks on a beach: one selling noodles, one toasties, the other tacos. It was chaos. In his younger days, Ramsay would have exploded. Older, wiser Ramsay was encouraging. Exasperated, but encouraging.”
Roland White, Daily Mail
“If there’s one problem with Future Food Stars, which in fairness I did find to be quite compelling as BBC competition shows go, it’s that it’s trying to do too many things, and the tonal shifts can be a bit weird. But in all the ways that count, that ridiculous, dad-enthusiasm ambition is also its biggest strength. After all, when you give Gordon Ramsay the full heft of the BBC and tell him to do what he wants with it, the answer is always going to be thus: absolutely everything, including but not limited to making his entrance by flying in on a helicopter and absolutely jumping out of it.”
Lauren O’Neill, The i
“It all feels tired, derivative and pointless. The producers have read the 2022 room well enough to know that viewers are unlikely to have the appetite for more rage than the world itself is offering right now, but of course the problem is that Gordon on the leash is even less fun than Gordon off the leash. It will fill a hole in the schedules, but, essentially, it’s an underspiced taco, a plain cheddar toastie or stodgy noodles with some stuff chucked on top.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian
Slow Horses, Apple+
“It’s solidly entertaining, well-acted and well-plotted. Jack Lowden, in his first big leading role for television, is very likeable here. And there is fine support from a cast that includes Kristin Scott Thomas as the spy chief. I can’t help thinking it a shame that a British show with an all-British cast, based on books by a British author, should end up on a US streaming service to which a relatively small number of British viewers subscribe. But that’s the way of the world now.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph
“Slow Horses, a pitch-black comedy about not-very-good spies, is English to its core. Everyone is miserable, the streets are dirty, and the camera filter is the colour of a damp paperback stuffed in the backroom of an Oxfam. It feels like home. There’s a sliver of familiar comic apathy that runs through; characters seem to speak in sighs, offsetting serious subject matter with dry wit. Unexpectedly, it all meshes well: the show never veers too far into levity as to overpower the drama, and vice versa.”
Adam White, The Independent
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