“Dooley’s relatable presenting style was a good fit for the subject”
“Dooley’s relatable presenting style was a good fit for the subject. Her heart-on-sleeve empathy always allows her to ask disarmingly direct questions.”
Helen Brown, The Telegraph
“Her challenge as a documentarist is that, once we have acclimatised to the scenario, the basic conclusions that Ready for War? will draw risk being obvious. It’s not great, is the answer – these men are in an extraordinary situation and we can see for ourselves what is extraordinary about it. But by patiently getting to know individuals from the new cohort, Dooley finds the moments that make it hit hard.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian
“You can see why the BBC loves Dooley so much – she is such a versatile presenter, whether hosting game shows like This is MY House, bothering viewers’ tear ducts with DNA Family Secrets or doing more punchy investigative reporting on stalkers or ISIS. Like Louis Theroux, she receives star billing, and there were arguably too many shots of her empathetic responses.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i
“This was the closest we will ever have to a glimpse of what our grandfathers and great-grand-fathers must have experienced, ordinary lads marching off in village brigades to the slaughtering fields of Flanders in 1914. No one showed self-pity and all fear was hidden. But a single moment of genuine emotion from translator Iliia, choking up because she knew that many of these young men could soon be dead, was more affecting than all the fake tears on every reality show.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“The course seemed pretty hardcore in the depths of winter, though to Ukranians that might have felt balmy. Dooley watched the various modules: landmine training, the survival camp in which they slept in rain-filled foxholes, ‘learning to be lethal’. It must be surreal to go from being a gardener to a trained killer almost overnight.”
Carol Midgley, The Times
Obsession, Netflix
“Nothing sits quite right about this 21st-century adaptation of Josephine Hart’s 1991 bestseller. Neither the plot story – nor Hart’s original dialogue – map convincingly onto 2023. A fact the filmmakers acknowledge by styling the entire show in mid 20th-century creams, browns and greens (I must admit I lusted after much of the rich mahogany furniture) and soaking the soundtrack in vintage soul.”
Helen Brown, The Telegraph
“The sex is fine. It’s the obsession bit that’s the problem. Mainly because on camera ‘gazing at someone with barely controllable lust and adoration’ reads uncannily like ‘being suddenly stricken with the urgent and barely controllable need for a poo’. For much of the time, Armitage and Murphy both look as if they have overdone it on the biryani and need to make a sharp exit.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian
“This is the problem with this adaptation of Josephine Hart’s 1991 novel, later made into a film in 1992 starring Jeremy Irons: it wants to gird our loins, but often it just makes us giggle. Obsession has been hailed as the successor to Fifty Shades of Grey, but instead it gives us an overload of shlock, foreboding string music and some depressing, grunty shagging.”
Jessie Thompson, The Independent
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