The Agency; Meet the Rees-Moggs; Game of Throws

“An impressive roster of talent does not always translate in to excellence, but in this case it adds up to one of the best series of 2024. How realistic is it? Difficult to assess, since I’ve never worked for a foreign intelligence service but it certainly feels authentic and, more importantly, it’s a chilly, complex, utterly engrossing drama that unfolds in unexpected ways.”
Neil Armstrong, The i

“On the basis of the first couple of episodes, it feels as if The Agency spent so much time amassing a murderers’ row of prestigious names that it forgot to put any petrol in the tank. This is a slow, ambling show that, at times, feels as if it is collapsing under the weight of its own self-importance.”
Stuart Heritage, The Guardian

“Michale Fassbender has such a strong screen presence that I could watch him unhappily pad around his kitchen all day. But The Agency doesn’t go deep enough into the PMD, and insists on spending half of its time as a bog standard thriller.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The purpose of Meet the Rees-Moggs, a surprisingly lowbrow venture for a chap who likes to quote Latin, appears to be to rub our noses in his extreme poshness at every turn. And remind us that he is an eccentric English gent who gets staff to iron his boxer shorts and has the family gussied up in black tie for dinner every Saturday evening.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The why of it is a compelling question. On the one hand, a lust for fame does not jibe with what we know of poshos. On the other hand, anyone who puts together a persona as carefully as Jacob has over the years – and he is his own pastiche – is hardly someone not crying out for attention. Once the show begins, however, the why fades to a background hum as the Rees-Moggery begins. [His wife] Helena quickly becomes the star of the show. Her wit is so dry it leaves you feeling sandpapered. I think she may become my new obsession.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“It’s not a patch on The F***ing Fulfords, Channel 4’s classic of the genre, but there’s still plenty of material here for students of the British class system. Why the unwillingness of a grown man to eat anything but nursery food? Are all well-to-do children allowed to clamber on the sofa in their shoes? Is it good manners to let Shaun drive you for two hours to Boris Johnson’s birthday party and have him sit in a lay-by eating crisps until it’s time to drive you home again?”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“We know Rees-Mogg loves attention, given he appears to have never turned down a media opportunity in his life. We should refuse to give it to him given the part he has played in the failures of the previous government, but unfortunately I enjoy gawping at posh people and they have not been documented with this much knowing humour since the 2014 BBC documentary Inside Tatler.”
Sarah Carson, The i

“He is afforded an avuncular, often buffoonish, quality that the show makers clearly think is TV gold. Plink plonk: the score announces, if it wasn’t clear already, that this is all whimsical fun. The mercy of Meet the Rees-Moggs is that it’s so toothless it will likely pass, undetected, through the TV schedule. Those expecting a hate-watch will be disappointed; those expecting a political hagiography will find it vapid.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent

“If the documentary’s intention is to show a new side to the game once associated with fag smoke, sticky carpets and pasty-faced, fat-bellied men in gold chains (though there were quite a few ‘generously proportioned’ chaps here, to be fair), it succeeds. But this series, niftily edited and at a cracking pace, shows in its second episode the mental and, yes, physical toll the game takes on players at the highest level. This viewing experience might not be as boozy as a night out at the darts but it is great entertainment with a thoughtful underbelly.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It’s a solid documentary, but I wish it went a bit deeper – I’d love to know more about Luke Humphries – who beat Luke Littler in that final. Or promoter Barry Hearn, whose life sounds as colourful as the Ally Pally crowd: at one point he tells us that birthday presents from his staff have included a flagpole, some llamas and a defibrillator.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Game of Throws correctly celebrates darts as a working-class festival, a supersize cartoon of the ideal British pub: somehow the blokes in the corner, playing a fiendish game to impossible standards, fit right in to a room stuffed with steaming revellers.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian