Panorama: The Billion-Pound Savings Scandal; Better Call Saul; The Box: An American Murder Story; High Heat

“The report pulled its punches when excoriating the FCA, whose ex-head Andrew Bailey is now governor of the Bank of England. It was left to banking expert Paul Carlier, one of those who tried to blow the whistle on Blackmore, to state the obvious: ‘In my opinion, the FCA has hung investors out to dry.’ In the absence of robust protection from our financial guardian, this documentary gave a crucial warning for anyone looking at ways to re-invest their pension money: take care of your cash, because you can’t rely on the FCA to do it for you.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“You could sympathise with the sense of anger and humiliation felt by the amateur investors, such as John Robbins, who lost his entire RAF military pension (“they took everything I had”). They are conducting their own campaign for justice, something perhaps helped by this uncomfortably riveting Panorama, which you feel must have had the BBC’s lawyers earning their keep. Anyone looking to invest their money could have been caught out by such a scheme, even if in retrospect the flashy promotional material now looks like bull. Yet as chilling as anything here was the damning picture it built up of failures from the Financial Conduct Authority itself. The FCA was given a roasting here; in return, it offered denials of responsibility and an official response that “it is profoundly sorry” and has issued new rules around pension transfers. It hardly did much for your confidence in this most crucial of regulators.”
James Jackson, The Times 

“It has surpassed its progenitor, Breaking Bad, and while in my view it’s not as profound as Mad Men or The Sopranos, it is surely one of the most beautifully directed of all premium dramas. I will miss all those oblique close-ups, witty camera angles, the crystal-clear cinematography and the lack of bossy incidental music.The casting and performances have been terrific, too, and while Gilligan has intimated that this is the end of the Breaking Bad universe, there is surely more mileage in Rhea Seehorn’s Kim, perhaps focusing on her legal-aid work in Florida.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i 

“With Better Call Saul, showrunners Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan have opted for something slower and sadder. Is it better or worse than the conclusion to Breaking Bad? Opinions will differ – but Saul’s leave-taking feels every bit as momentous and painstaking as that of its sibling thriller. Indeed, in different circumstances, the big send-off would have felt like a class reunion. There were cameos by all our favourites – Mike Ehrmantraut, Walter (again), Marie – and, most satisfyingly, Jimmy’s electricity-adverse brother and bête noire Chuck.  Yet each of these appearances is bound up in a deep ennui. The finale circles the theme of the past – via the recurring motif of time travel – and how it cannot be changed, merely atoned for.”

Ed Power, The Telegraph 

“While Breaking Bad’s bullet-sprayed finale pleased a majority of viewers and critics at the time, its reputation has faded in the years since. There was too much bombast, not enough of the mercurial eccentricity that made it such a special series in the first place. Saul opts for a far more subdued approach. The show has always excelled at visual storytelling, trusting its audience to notice and interpret the various symbols and mirrored images without overexplaining things. “Saul Gone” is dense with them, invoking a multitude of images from past episodes to absolutely devastating effect. Sometimes, letting things just calmly play out can be the most affecting, satisfying end there is.”
Louis Chilton, The Independent

“True crime docs featuring dead women and serial killers are, by their nature, playing to our ghoulish fascination, but the better ones (The Keepers, The Staircase) allow you to forget that. The first episode of The Box didn’t, I found, even if it’s only right that what happened to Pamela Maurer — a 16-year-old girl found killed in an Illinois town in 1976 — is finally uncovered, 46 years on. We heard “we found a box filled with photos of women — naked and drugged”, and it seemed it was possible we had some previously undetected Ted Bundy on our hands, which is pretty shocking. But served up for the consumption of couch potatoes? At the dramatic music’s hysterical crescendo before the cut to credits, this, you may have felt, was for incurable rubberneckers only.” 
James Jackson, The Times 

”Its tone is close to comedic but it refuses to lean into that by giving anyone a regular stock of funny lines, despite having a prime candidate in the eccentric boarding-house proprietress whose accommodation is across the street from the station, and whose daughters are all dating or perving over the firefighters. Nor does High Heat fully embrace the camp of soap by unloading one outrageous twist after another with a fierce, straight face – the revelations are implausibly convenient, for sure, but never delightfully, screamingly ridiculous. And if you tune in to enjoy hunky firefighters flexing their buttocks in gratuitous communal shower scenes before heading home for hot sex with their ladyfolk … well, you won’t be left completely hanging, but neither will you be brought above a mild simmer. Even the station’s sexually voracious pencil-skirted in-house psychologist (Ana Jimena Villanueva) doesn’t generate all that much mischievous spice. Mostly, High Heat is just a bit sloppy.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian