This is Going to Hurt; Cheaters; Inventing Anna

“The BBC adaptation is excellent and Whishaw is a joy to watch, staggering with exhaustion and black eye bags through each day and never not drenched in a cocktail of vaginal blood and placenta flecks. Very few dramas manage convincingly to pull off making you laugh out loud one moment and feel profoundly sad the next. Ricky Gervais is the master of this with After Life, and This Is Going to Hurt achieves a similar feat in being painfully funny.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Like the book, This Is Going to Hurt is full of images and scenes that you’ll hope to forget, but, more unexpectedly, it also retains the two most difficult aspects of the book. The first is the fatigue, and the fathomless stupidities, injustices and lack of resources that cause it. The second admirable feature is that the drama doesn’t soften the Adam who is presented in the book.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Ben Whishaw has his work cut out making the role likeable. But it’s good casting, because however hateful he’s being, we can see that he’s Ben Whishaw, voice of Paddington and an actor who can’t help projecting vulnerability. That’s vital to the success of this series, because otherwise we’re just watching someone be an insufferable smart-arse.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Whishaw is always brilliant when playing passive-aggressive, nervous men at breaking point, and this role — adapted from Kay’s real-life medical memoir by the author himself — is perfect for him. The set-piece opening hits like an avalanche. It’s a unique moment, unlike anything in any hospital drama you’ve seen before. The closing shot, of our hero slumping into sleep at a strip club as he arrives for the end of a friend’s stag night, is just as extraordinary.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Adam’s wit makes the migration from book to screen perfectly. Even his sarcastic asides make the cut, in the form of addressing the audience, Fleabag-style. Adam isn’t the nicest man in the NHS, especially when it comes to dealing with his equally knackered house officer (the first rung of the junior doctor ladder) Shruti (newcomer Ambika Mod, excellent), but his honesty and gallows humour still make him likeable. The supporting cast are equally brilliant.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Unsurprisingly, given that it’s a memoir adapted by its author, it is a sympathetic portrait. As an overworked junior registrar on a hospital labour ward, Adam is knackered but always does his best. You never get the sense there is anything other than a shining golden heart beneath his occasionally brusque humour. Whishaw’s last outing was in his performance as Q in No Time to Die. It’s refreshing to see him freed from the shackles of that claggy franchise into a role better suited to his gifts. Reassuring, too, because This Is Going to Hurt relies almost entirely on him.”
Ed Cumming, The Independent

“Joshua McGuire and Susan Wokoma are both excellent: McGuire is slightly stereotypical but funny as an overthinking nerd who struggles to keep any emotion hidden or under control; Wokoma is even better, with more to play with as a woman whose outward assertiveness masks her vulnerability. By the end of episode three, we’ve laughed plenty and ridden out some awkward moments. We can see Cheaters’ flaws and perhaps it’s not a keeper, but we’re feeling the characters’ yearning and we’re starting to share it.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Wokoma and McGuire inhabited their chalk-and-cheese characters perfectly, performing new kid on the block Oliver Lyttelton’s sharp script with ease. Adding up to three hours in total, Cheaters might seem like too much of a slog if episodes were squashed together. But in their short, precise bursts of humour, the episodes still manage to never feel rushed. If this is an experiment to determine how well short form shows will work for the BBC, it’s a successful one.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Inventing Anna takes this fascinating story of a con artist who scammed Manhattan society and breezes through it with all the depth of an Emily in Paris episode. There is no attempt to discover Delvey’s motivation, or the roots of her manipulative narcissism. The main entertainment is in waiting for the jig to be up, and in seeing how easily everyone was taken in by some namedropping and the appearance of wealth.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph