The Met; The Hidden Children Of Ruinerwold Farm; Life on Our Planet; Milli Vanilli

“The Met promised to be different, laying bare the breakdown in public trust and the shocking allegations that racism, bullying and even sexual assault are commonplace within the ranks. It did nothing of the kind. Though some of the investigations it tracked were of serious crimes, this opening episode (the first of six) lacked insight into both the culture of the force and the personalities within it. Unlike its sister documentary, Ambulance, this gave us little new understanding of the psychological pressures of the work, or the characters who do the job.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Should our national broadcaster be in the business of helping the police court public sympathy rather than genuinely earn back the public trust via, say, the capture and conviction of criminals regardless of the type of victim they favour? Or should it remain at a distance and keep its powder dry in case it ever needs to investigate further failures, or look at exactly what is being done to counter or cure the marrow-deep sickness we now know it carries? Have we just watched a valuable corrective to the headline horrors or a whitewash? Who is to say?”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“The full picture emerges slowly in this four-part documentary, entirely in Dutch with subtitles. As creepy as a real-life horror movie, it conveys a sense of how ordinary, even normal, life in a cult can become… while being simultaneously terrifying.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Director Jessica Villerius’s most impressive achievement was to make a sober documentary that avoided sensationalism but did not soft-peddle the monstrousness Israel and his siblings say they suffered. Others would have fallen into the trap of a more over-the-top method of storytelling – but Villerius set out the siblings’ account and let the alleged horror speak for itself.”
Ed Power, The i

“If the series was less concerned with constantly reinforcing how incredible everything is, it could have found room to be more informative. Watch the show with an inquisitive child and you might find them asking questions that the programme doesn’t answer, such as what caused the spikes and falls in oxygen/CO2 levels that led to the mass extinctions of the ancient past. As it is, Life on Our Planet is the sort of empty spectacle we no longer have time for.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“It’s an absorbing blend of comedy and tragedy. The comedy comes from the band’s hubris – ‘Musically we are more talented than Paul McCartney,’ they once declared – and from the hapless management underling who sparked the band’s downfall by entering them for the Grammys, not realising that the requirement to sing live on stage would be disastrous. The tragedy is Rob’s death. The only scandal is that the music industry got rich off these two, then threw them to the wolves.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph