The Secret Army; Aldi’s Next Big Thing; Interior Design Masters; Crime Scene Berlin

“There was something fascinating simply in watching the former IRA guys remembering it all. Because it can be hard to know how to feel when seeing the elderly talk about their days supporting terrorism. One reformed character, now a grandfather six times over, nevertheless welled up in his misty memories of hanging out with McGuinness in his car-bomb days. Another revisited the scene of his city-centre bomb without any contrition because they had given a warning to police and the media. So that’s all right then.”
James Jackson, The Times

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“The televisual equivalent of one of those carpet-cleaning TikTok videos – soothing but falling short of soporific – Aldi’s Next Big Thing was more compelling than it had any right to be.”
Emily Watkins, The i

“Head judge Michelle Ogundehin seemed to set up the teams for catastrophe when she urged them to take liberties with the owners’ instructions: ‘You are the designers, give them what they don’t know they want.’ That isn’t ‘creative’. It’s reckless. It must be a deliberate ploy to provoke idiotic mistakes for the sake of entertainment, because in the real world no interior design business can survive by dumping disasters on their clients. What the cameras really want is eccentricity, not competence.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Victims’ friends and family members mostly profess themselves mystified by the dark allure of the capital’s gay scene. The documentary’s own lacklustre attempts to explain this scene amount to shots of neon signage reflected in rain-slicked streets, some showy editing in the dramatic reconstructions, and the frequent appearance of ‘[electronic music plays]’ in the subtitles. A bit of balance in regard to the pleasures, as well as the dangers, of this world, might have made for more compelling viewing.”
Ellen E Jones, The Guardian