The Full Monty; The Witness Is a Whale; Africa Rising with Afua Hirsch

“A sprinkling of decent gags, some fine performances and evident good intentions towards exposing the continuing impoverishment of the north and indicting those responsible unfortunately aren’t enough to stop the series feeling … well, boring. It feels neither as real nor as uplifting as its progenitor, showing us less of the characters, society, the deep malaise and human potential than before.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“The series is a litany of society’s current ills, from underfunded schools and hospitals to the mazy bureaucracy of claiming benefits. What’s missing is the film’s sense of joy and the triumph-over-adversity provided by the stripping. The script is baggy in places, unlike the film, in which every gag landed with a satisfying thwack.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“A one-off film, The Witness Is a Whale was beautiful, elegant and initially hard to get a handle on. Was it a natural history film about whale behaviour? A lyrical eulogy to a species? An environmental exposé of the secret mass killing of whales by the Soviet Union and Japan? It was all of these things interwoven, couched in awed statements about the importance of whales to the health of our oceans.”
James Jackson, The Times

“A mesmerising hour-long documentary about the largest animals that have ever lived on eart… Upsetting and beautiful in equal measure, this film pieced clues together and estimated that 300 years ago, there were five million whales in the oceans… almost all wiped out by the time a global moratorium on whaling was imposed in 1986.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Hirsch opens the door for the Africa-curious and makes it clear why the world should pay attention to every part of it. The series makes you wish 51 more episodes were coming, to cover the rest of the continent.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian