The Generation Game; Kiss Me First; Lenny Henry; Dave Allen at Peace

“In terms of what we should expect from prime time Easter television, this fell well short of the mark. And it focuses the mind on what we should be saying to those responsible for entertainment at the BBC: stop trying to revisit the past. Go away and think up some original ideas.”
Gerard O’Donovan, The Telegraph

“Didn’t they do well? No, they did not. Bake Off cast-offs Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins last night took a great British institution and ran it into the ground. The BBC’s Easter Sunday attempt to resurrect The Generation Game was cheap, shoddy, devoid of genuine slapstick and barely able to raise a single titter in an entire hour.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It was unfortunate this latest effort arrived so close to the BBC’s Bruce Forsyth tribute . By comparison, this felt forced and scripted, another territory for the Mel and Sue brand to colonise post-Bake Off rather than an original updating of an old format.”
Jeff Robson, The i

“The first of six episodes of Kiss Me First is ambitious, promising, and bleak as hell. Aimed at young adults, the digital natives whose lives have been most documented (or harvested?), it feels uncomfortably prescient for sci-fi. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian

“Kiss Me First feels in certain ways like a spiritual successor to Skins for the social media age – but an altogether more melancholy and less endearing one. The obvious comparison is Steven Spielberg’s recently released virtual reality movie Ready Player One. But its menu of pop-culture references offers nothing as nourishing as Kiss Me First’s atmosphere of angst and despair.”
Stephen Kelly, The Telegraph

“I’m too fogeyish to care about avatars with names such as Shadowfax and Mania. Yet even I can see that this drama, based on the bestselling novel by Lottie Moggach, is clever and timely. It will no doubt resonate deeply with young people.”
Carol Midgley , The Times

“This was an hour heavy on personal journey, but it was an interesting and revealing one. Henry’s force of personality and unmediated honesty ensured the daft moments never jarred unduly with the horrifying, if familiar, sequences about plantation slavery.”
Gabriel Tate, The Telegraph

“Lenny Henry: The Commonwealth Kid was both touching and thought-provoking, with genuine emotion in place of the crocodile-like tears most celebs cry for the cameras. No more meaningful reminder could exist that the Commonwealth is a family of nations tightly bound together.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“It was a nice wallow in Allen’s childhood and the 1970s, but why did it totally swerve his marriages and three children? The script barely afforded Allen’s personal life a few words. Gillen’s performance, however, made it worthwhile.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Allen specialised in long monologues with explosive punchlines. This one-off show tried to imitate that, and found it’s much harder than it looks. It was a mystery, too, why so many of the original sketches were remade shot-for-shot. Surely the Seventies footage would have worked just as well. A wicked disappointment.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Aidan Gillen did a splendid turn as the sharp-suited funnyman, Scotch and fag ever at the ready, but as stories go, I’ve read more detail in a joke book.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express