Help! We Bought a Village; Myanmar: The Forgotten Revolution; River

“Channel 4 has a knack for borrowing and combining the best elements from its own shows, and this one is a mixture of Escape To The Chateau and Remarkable Renovations. It’s uncomplicated — there are no rows, no deadlines, no disasters. Not that you miss them — the fantasy of having a whole village to yourself is more than enough.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Combining house-hunting with escapism, this was textbook daytime fluff. Quietly engrossing, it portrayed lovely people in gentle jeopardy. Can they finish spring-cleaning before guests arrive? Will the rain stop in time to serve canapés in the garden? With twee ye olde graphics, ravishing scenery to admire and bucolic lifestyles to vaguely fantasise about, buying a village even began to look tempting.”
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph 

”It’s interesting that while in places such as Cornwall and the Lake District holiday homes are accused of sucking the life out of villages, here they were resurrecting them. They should schedule this in the evening, not 4pm — it was Grand Designs on stilts.” 
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It was grimly well timed to be broadcast on the day that we learnt the junta has executed four pro-democracy activists, the country’s first use of capital punishment for decades. But at least Channel 4 bothered to show it, even though it made for gruesome, enraging viewing.” 
Carol Midgley, The Times

“At this point, the documentary becomes more than a TV programme; it becomes evidence. Because the footage in the film shows that the military does target civilians. The testimony of defectors from the army says so, too. This isn’t just a list of atrocities, to be mourned and then forgotten; it is the building of a case. That is what makes it such valuable journalism – it will be part of the future prosecution’s case in a war crimes trial, at such a time when the UN decides it has the stomach for it.”
Phil Harrison, The Guardian

“While an intrusive score by the Australian Chamber Orchestra swelled, it was like having a pompous geography graduate chuntering in your ear during a classical recital. As seems compulsory for nature documentaries nowadays, the home stretch became a finger-wagging lecture about plastic waste and climate change. Just when things couldn’t get more miserable, Radiohead turned up on the soundtrack. This wasn’t meditative enough to qualify as “Slow TV”, partly because neither Dafoe nor the musicians would pipe down. By the time the credits rolled on River, I wanted to throw myself into the nearest one.”  
Michael Hogan, The Telegraph 

“The high-definition photography and astonishing aerial shots were mesmerising. But the turgid, pretentious script, crammed with platitudes about the sacredness of rivers, was a constant distraction.” 
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail