The Great; The South Bank Show; Keep Breathing

”The producers have gone for youth – Fanning is a fresh-faced 24 – and it’s certainly more fun than the turgid series from a few years back starring Helen Mirren. The star of the show is Nicholas Hoult as the capricious Peter, in an outrageous performance that simultaneously channels two Blackadder monarchs: Hugh Laurie’s Prince George and Miranda Richardson’s Queen Elizabeth.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph 

”Bromilow’s scenes with Fanning are key to The Great’s genius. The women in this show know they’re engaging in a nightmarishly accelerated feminist struggle, in which the wrong move means degradation or death; when The Great began, the misogyny was on occasion hard to watch.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian 

Whatever the writer’s intentions, it now seems the cast are playing it for laughs — and The Great is far better for it…Amid the madness, a suspicious viewer might wonder whether actual nuggets of historical fact are concealed. A servant placed a frog on the empress’s pregnant belly, supposedly a Russian folk remedy against miscarriage.And though the script is mostly foul language and twee platitudes, the occasional bit of pith does slip through.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Each episode is an irreverent, decadent, deliciously written and frequently puerile nugget of pure entertainment, which beautifully sends up the more po-faced elements of the traditional period drama.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Helen didn’t disappoint. ‘When I was asked, this was long before The Crown,’ she said. ‘I thought: “Are you allowed to do that?”…The dialogue became enjoyably testy as Melvyn’s flattery missed the mark. ‘What got me completely,’ he said, ‘was the interiority that came through your performance.’…What a joy to witness an intelligent conversation, not one consisting of pre-packaged anecdotes and toilet gags like every other current chat show.” 
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

”Bragg doesn’t seem interested in such things as news lines and personal revelations (it’s kind of an anti Piers Morgan’s Life Stories in that respect), but instead a discussion of the “process” and the “interiority” of Mirren’s performance as the Queen. In that respect it can be quite “luvvie” and occasionally pretentious, but it is absorbing; a civilised, highbrow hour in which you can lose yourself. Just don’t expect any water-cooler moments.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

”Where its predecessors were inventive in their approach, Keep Breathing plods along, tediously unrealistic and painfully predictable.” 
Inga Parkel, The Independent