Strike: Inside the Unions; Poker Face

“Although two-thirds of the leaders profiled here are women, it’s Mick Lynch and his unremittingly male negotiating team who are the focus. Time and again they strut in tweeds and flat caps through the streets to another face-off with the running dogs of capital. It’s as if Peaky Blinders never ended. Not everybody in the media is a government lickspittle without two brain cells to rub together, but sometimes this programme makes you wonder.”
Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian

“I would have liked to have seen more analysis of the pay deals the various professions wanted, but it was interesting to see the union leaders at work behind the scenes. Pity we only saw one side of the story, but then whose fault is that?”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“This was an honourable attempt to deliver a more rounded picture of the trade union movement during a period of historic industrial upheaval. But for all those good intentions, as television Strike was a bit of a miss.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“A disclaimer declared that government departments and companies hit by the current wave of strikes, affecting everything from transport to healthcare, had declined to comment. This was a pallid excuse for bias, in a programme that amounted to a celebration of the union organisers who are trying to hold the country to ransom.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Each of the nine episodes follows the same format. But all the episodes are fun, and working a lighter and more clearly comic scene than Columbo et al. Natasha Lyonne is as mesmerising as ever, perhaps all the more so for not being quite as effortfully and obviously turned up to the max as she was at all times in Russian Doll.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian