Sixteen: Class of 2021; Kevin Can F**k Himself; Feel the Noise

“Film-makers do a fine job of letting the children (and they are children – the late, lamented baked potato proves it if nothing else) and the moments speak for themselves, trusting the viewers to piece together the emerging, bleak and saddening themes.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Channel 4 discovered long ago that schools are fertile ground for TV producers. All those hopes and dreams to be realised or thwarted. There are the guileless kids, and the ones who are hiding their vulnerability behind bravado. Kids with bright futures, and others for whom your heart sinks because the odds are stacked against them through no fault of their own. You find yourself rooting for all of them.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Glimpsed in the opening seconds of Sixteen: Class of 2021, it took us instantly, and rather beautifully into the show’s world of young people”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“These documentaries rely on handheld footage, often shot on phone cameras, and too much of that can be wearing. But whether in the classroom or the emergency call handling centre, the demands of Covid were relentless.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail 

“High marks for this emotionally pulverising documentary”

Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“In its haha-but-not-really tone and nihilistic gloom, the series Kevin Can F**k Himself most closely resembles is BoJack Horseman, the Netflix cartoon satire about a washed-up actor. Where that takes direct aim at Hollywood, this show approaches it more obliquely, exposing the fraudulence of so many TV visions of domestic life. The execution doesn’t always match up to the ambition, but in its best moments Kevin Can F**k Himself walks a brilliantly uneasy line between comedy and drama. We’ll excuse almost anything for a laugh.”
Ed Cumming, The Independent

“Instead of following the breakdown of a boundary between reality and fiction, we end up watching two increasingly unrelated narratives – the better of which keeps getting interrupted by a clunking 90s sitcom, complete with dull storylines about get-rich-quick schemes or the boss coming to dinner that neither illuminate nor complicate Allison’s story, nor create any thematic symbiosis. Murphy and Inboden keep you watching, though the whole cast is strong. Murphy switches from dark to light, hitting every comic and emotional beat with an effortlessness that makes you marvel it took her this long to find the limelight.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian 

“This was eight documentaries packed into one, something that lent it a slightly directionless feel, with tons of information inevitably skated over in Lauren Laverne’s slightly shopworn narrative about teenagers rebelling against the establishment.”
Ben Dowell, The Times