Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes; Cheat: Unfinished Business

“Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a four-part drama by Jeff Pope, portrays the horror of that moment with breathtaking clarity. The sheer power and speed of the killing are viscerally startling: De Menezes (Edison Alcaide) is tackled, pinned and shot before he can utter a word in protest. Something has gone profoundly, unimaginably wrong, and Suspect is an enraging picture of what went wrong and how.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“The four parts move between terrorist thriller and family tragedy, internal affairs tensions and, finally, courtroom drama (depicting the inquests into the shooting), which can come over as almost too ambitious. Yet each side of the story is told with grim efficiency, and at the centre, the moment of de Menezes’s execution, is a real jolt of shocking brutality.”
James Jackson, The Times

“Barring the half-hour or so covering de Menezes’s fateful journey that morning, the series fails to achieve high levels of dramatic tension. It feels more like a historical document, expository rather than gripping, made primarily to clear the victim’s name and assign blame for the bungled operation. Laudable, but not edge-of-your-seat TV.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The Met’s surveillance of the block of flats, their following of Menezes to Stockwell Station and their eventual shooting of him makes for chilling television. Sometimes, when it comes to true crime, knowing the outcome of a story can undermine how it is told. Not so here, as each step the armed unit takes towards the eventual victim increases the dread.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Cheat: Unfinished Business is a reality show hosted by Amanda Holden, notable for being the single worst thing that has ever been created in the history of humankind. You might think this is an exaggeration, but that’s only because you haven’t just watched four episodes of Cheat: Unfinished Business in a row, and haven’t found yourself involuntarily clawing at your eyes in a doomed bid to injure any part of your brain that might remember watching it. I have. Quite frankly it’s a wonder I can still type.”
Stuart Heritage, The Guardian

“Drama-wise, it is the TV equivalent of sitting on a bus and overhearing a stranger moaning on the phone about their ex. Then going on seven other bus journeys and having to listen to the same sort of thing. Why is this considered remotely entertaining? The only time the show threatens to splutter into life is when one of the women starts making a play for another man in the group – either failing to understand the assignment, or angling for a place on the real Love Island.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph