Sex Education; Picasso; Still Up; The Continental

“Sex Education scripts used to be fleet and funny. Now everyone is earnest, delivering life lessons at every turn and making you long for the days when humour was still an honoured part of the human condition. The final series has its moments, mostly when it returns to the core cast and regains the confidence to let them do their still-glorious, alchemical thing together. The rest is heavy going and the goodbye less painful that it should have been.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Sex Education’s final series is by some way its worst. It commits the cardinal sin of closing the school we’d all got to know and love (Moordale Secondary) and shifting almost everyone to a new one, Cavendish College. Cavendish is a hotbed of new-age cobblers where every student has the right to be seen for their truth. And don’t they know it. All of the new Cavendish cast are irritating, and though this is obviously part of the point – how will the Moordale OGs adapt? – it doesn’t make the do-gooders any more bearable.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“This new school is the embodiment of what right-wing commentators want us to believe ‘woke’ schools are really like. If I wanted to give the series the benefit of the doubt, I’d say its portrayal of the college is a tongue-in-cheek response to those arguments, but most of all, as a long-time fan of the show, I found it nothing more than irritating.”
Emily Baker, The i

“A deep discussion of the opening episode’s key work, particularly what it reveals about Picasso’s view of women, never quite materialises as several interviewees have their say. This programme might have been better with someone like Casely-Hayford authoring it: a named presenter gives an art-history documentary a point of view around which to pivot. Without one, it can feel like watching a textbook.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“It is more concerned with charting faithfully the life and work of the master and monster who treated women brutally but painted beautifully, letting the viewer draw their own conclusions. The result is a luscious three-hour fresco given added texture by old audio recordings and photographs, and the testimonies of his daughter Paloma and three of his grandchildren, who weren’t allowed near him when he died in 1973 because his wife refused to let them in. “
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Some of the awful things he did were new to me (such as adopt a 13-year old daughter, then paint her in poses so explicit that his wife Fernande Olivier suggested the safest place for the poor girl was back in the orphanage), but broadly speaking, in what was a serious and thorough analysis, Picasso was roughly as awful as I was expecting.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“Were it not for the charisma of Craig Roberts and Antonia Thomas, Still Up would probably prove far too slow a burn to keep viewers through the four or five episodes it takes to pull the disparate threads together and become something other than a meandering examination of their unsatisfactory lives.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Still Up draws a moving portrait of two people in a crowded city desperately trying not to feel alone. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry. It’s proof that, alongside making pricy smartphones, Apple has mastered the art of heartbreaking comedy.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“Other recent small-screen spin-offs that have attempted to channel movie popularity without a whiff of their lead have come and gone without fanfare. The Continental has enough swagger to make a more compelling case for itself, elevated by its oddball ensemble, quirky period production design and a hardworking soundtrack of soul and classic disco.”
Graeme Virtue, The Guardian

“It’s fast-paced, ludicrous fun, with Purge-star Colin Woodell full of dapper charm as the young Ian McShane. But, for better or worse, the driving force is Mel Gibson, who puts in his most over-the-top appearance since Mad Max. In the process, he transforms The Continental into a bug-eyed, b-movie cheese-fest hewn in his gonzo image.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph