Mad Women; Queen Cleopatra; Eurovision Semi-Final

“This programme isn’t designed to be a deep interrogation of the capitalist machine. It is a celebration – and one I don’t think I’ve seen before – of women making inroads into an industry that, despite its vaunted modernity, excluded them from its inception. And those who were there have great stories to tell and great memories to evoke. It’s well-made, it’s fun, it’s a fine advertisement for their talents. It’s not going to change the world. And that’s fine.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Few would dispute the idea that, for two or three decades, TV adverts had a golden era, being often better than the programmes they punctuated. That was a point made in Mad Women, a documentary celebrating the female pioneers of advertising (and which was far more kindly disposed towards today’s ads). As the programme raced through this advertising history — the subject would have perhaps suited a two-parter — you felt that the testimonies for posterity of the earlier trailblazers was overdue.”
James Jackson, The Times

“This one-off salute to the sales sorceresses tried to kid us that these ads were somehow striking a blow for feminism. An example cited was the Pretty Polly spot where a lone woman on a Riviera road fixed the engine of her classic car, by unrolling her silk stocking to use as a fanbelt. Slightly more convincing was the argument by Alex Taylor, who was a junior art director at Saatchi & Saatchi when the Army started recruiting many more women in the late 1990s.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Netflix’s docudrama Queen Cleopatra tries to have its cake and eat it too: it has all the campy fun of Cleopatra the soap opera in dramatic re-enactments, but intersperses them with straight-faced expertise from academic talking heads. Despite these historians’ impressive credentials, the drama outshines the testimony at every turn. Executive producer Jada Pinkett Smith delivers the narration with such sombre self-righteousness that it sucks the joy out of the atmosphere. It’s a deliciously fun drama weighed down by the self-serious need to educate.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian

“I’ll admit that I now know more about Cleopatra than I did before - narratively it flows well, and does a halfway decent job of explaining why she was such a significant figure. But it’s too soapy for serious history fans, and not enough of a soap for viewers who like juicy historical dramas.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“With the UK’s Mae Muller guaranteed a place in Saturday’s final, it was an opportunity to sit back and watch the comparative minnows scrap for a place at the big boys’s table at the weekend. This was a boisterous affair. One helped massively by the pantomime dame energy put out by Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham. The co-presenter looked like she was having the time of her life playing air guitar and trading quips with a rubber turkey.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“Liverpool hit the mark perfectly between reverence and self-ridicule in this evening’s first of two Eurovision semi-finals. Hosting alongside and on behalf of last year’s winner Ukraine, the UK put on a show to be proud of, paying tribute to both host countries while showcasing an incredibly diverse group of performances from across the globe.”
Michael Chakraverty, The i