Lee Mack’s Road to Soccer Aid; Code 404; Grand Designs

“Mack has bags of charm and an everyman quality that made this hour a pleasure to watch.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“There was nothing any decent human could actively dislike about Lee Mack’s Road to Soccer Aid, in which the comedian, who has always played very badly at the charity match, sought to improve his game before the next one. Yet as TV entertainment it was all too redolent of those bum-clenching bits of Bake Off ‘comedy’, which Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas deploy to ease the tension in the kitchen, only strung out for an hour.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Acting as a drumroll for Unicef’s Soccer Aid proper, Lee Mack’s Road to Soccer Aid involved the comedian trawling round famous people asking for their advice to improve his game, and getting cringey motivational voicemails from those such as Olivia Colman and Emma Bunton. There were moments of humour but mostly this was filler, a vehicle for segments from Unicef and for a few eager celebs to show their support. Mack was game but there’s only so much mileage you can get from watching a comedian half-heartedly going to the gym.”
Emily Baker, The i

“The jokes are schoolboy silly, and you will enjoy them if you’re the sort of person to laugh at Major making sweary prank calls to Carver from the other side of the office. I am that person. Code 404’s weakness is the plots, which seem to be the show’s lowest priority – it’s not a serious crime drama, so why put any serious thought into the crime bit? I couldn’t tell you what was happening in it, but it seemed like something you might find on CBBC. Still, the actors are having a laugh, and it’s infectious.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“As the programme entered its 22nd season on Tuesday night, presenter Kevin McCloud seemed genuinely flabbergasted by this latest building. And, I’ll admit, so was I. The house was single-storey yet, for some reason, incredibly tall, with everything operated by the kind of digital touchpads which inevitably break, leaving lights and heating on indefinitely. It was envisioned as a kind of ultra-long corridor with, as McCloud pointed out, the gym at the opposite end from the shower, and the bins initially nowhere near the kitchen. As great TV though, it did not disappoint.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Like a dodgy flatpack, the wooden beams swelled and didn’t fit together. The £15,000 windows stubbornly refused to go in, and as the work dragged on for four years, labour costs alone were up to 20 grand a week. This is what we long to see in Grand Designs. Though it masquerades as a celebration of the eccentric and the ambitious, it’s really comfort viewing for traditionalists who would sooner have a caravan than some mad modernist extravaganza.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail