Our Guy In Colombia; Special Ops: Lioness; Fifteen-Love

“Fancy being kidnapped and waterboarded? Guy Martin does. “That sounds all right! Can I have a go?” he asked eagerly in Our Guy in Colombia (Channel 4), a new series in which he samples various hair-raising experiences. The kidnapping isn’t real – it’s a training exercise offered to Colombian MPs – but the waterboarding is. Martin lasted 40 seconds before giving in and yelling the code phrase to end the exercise. That may not sound too long on paper, but was pretty impressive to watch. Martin was supposed to say “one, two, three” in Spanish to call a halt to it, but ended up speaking German instead. “I was a bit flustered,” he explained afterwards, but could still manage to grin.
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“As any TV viewer knows, the celebrity travelogue is a genre so tiresomely overworked that many shows are dead on arrival. No, I don’t want to see some former soap actor having a pedicure and lamely trying t’ai chi in Thailand, thank you. Kill me now. But do I want to see them being waterboarded? Now you’re talking. You have to hand it to the former Lincolnshire lorry mechanic Guy Martin. There was barely a dull moment in Our Guy in Colombia as he showed how to make the lazy celebrity travelogue significantly less boring: he volunteered to be tortured and shot. An excellent precedent.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The pace didn’t let up. Guy emphasised that he never does drugs, although the film crew appeared to be on amphetamines: in the first hour of this two-part documentary, he didn’t stay in any one place for more than a few minutes.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Blimey, but Special Ops: Lioness is some brilliantly executed nonsense! This is nothing but a compliment, by the way. Full-blooded, uncynical nonsense is a vital part of a well-balanced TV diet, but it is difficult to do. There’s only so much Succession steak and fibrous slices of documentary you can eat, you know.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Admittedly, there’s a fair amount of cheesy dialogue. “In war, if you aren’t cheatin’, you aren’t tryin’,” a Marine tells Cruz, to which she responds: “I’ve been at war my whole life then.” But it’s pacy, cinematic, has big, complex action sequences and, alongside Saldaña, boasts some big stars: Nicole Kidman plays Joe’s superior and Morgan Freeman is the secretary of state (though Kidman had minimal screen time in the opening episode and Freeman didn’t show at all).”
Neil Armstrong, The i

“The show is good at what it does. The military sequences are well directed, the camaraderie of the team is well drawn, and each episode leaves you keen to see what happens next. It’s an effective action thriller, albeit one that only goes skin deep – there is none of Homeland’s complexity and the dialogue is cheesy in a Top Gun sort of way.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“As a gripping thriller, this drama ticks all the boxes – there’s mystery, there’s lies, there’s a really hateful villain (Turner is surprisingly brilliant at playing an evil narcissist). But where Fifteen-Love really exceeds is in its dissection of how a complaint of sexual assault is really handled by those who were supposed to protect the woman at the centre. The answer here, as has been too often proved to be the case in real life too, is badly.”
Emily Baker, The i