The Great Amazon Heist; Little Trains & Big Names; Surviving Paradise

“There is a scattershot quality to this array of minor gotchas, and it soon dawns on you that despite the title, there is no actual heist, just a man in wry battle with an entity that seemingly cannot be held to account (that said, the knife party stunt does prompt Amazon to reclassify four products – and they say they take age verification extremely seriously). Butler’s pièce de résistance, however, is still very satisfying. If the company didn’t use Luxembourg as a tax haven, says Labour MP Nadia Whittome, we might have more funding for schools and hospitals – and road maintenance (after all, how would all those deliveries happen without state-funded roads?). So Butler orders some pothole filler from Amazon, gets a builder to fix the holes, restocks the boxes with sand and gets a full refund.”
Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian

“The giddy yarn took in several pleasing plot twists, while wry on-screen graphics added to the fun. This was precisely the sort of youth-friendly factual fare that Channel 4 should be making. Sure, it was gonzo-style and hipster-ish but it made for more engaging – and enraging – viewing than any earnest exposé.”
Michael Hogan, Telegraph

“Winner of the Alan Partridge Commission of the Week award, Little Trains & Big Names with Pete Waterman was also, yes, really quite watchable. Even with a 45-minute in-depth interview with Jools Holland about his passion for modelling. As it turns out, Holland’s model railway is astonishing, extending over some 30 metres around his loft. There was something impressive about the pride Pete Waterman (the music-biz veteran is one of Britain’s leading modellers) and Holland took in their nerdery. OK, eventually the constant close-ups of models to cheerful music became maddening, but credit where it’s due – this might have been the most specialist in-depth interview ever broadcast on TV.”
James Jackson, The Times

“The layout in Jools’s attic, which spans a dozen scenes and eras in exquisite detail, sent Pete into raptures. He was so enamoured with the diorama, which famously features in the opening sequence of Jools’s music showcase Later … on BBC2, that he failed to dig into many of its secrets. The whole Holland autobiography and psychology appear to be encoded in this vast model. Every detail has a story to tell, but it would take a more incisive interviewer than Pete to discover them all. It became frustrating: I kept muttering, ‘Why don’t you ask him about that bit?’”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Winners, losers and traitors emerge, drop back into the mix and re-emerge in another category. Some participants we hate, some we love, some we love to hate, some we hate to love. Relationships form, collapse, mutate, reform. You care passionately and could not be more uninvested at the same time. All and none of human life is here. Enjoy. Or don’t. It’s not like there’s much of a difference.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian