Tulsa King; Hong Kong’s Fight for Freedom; Imagine… Douglas Stuart

“Sylvester Stallone has made his first foray into TV in a dramedy that is implausible, corny and yet quite enjoyable. Stallone’s films don’t tend to be my cup of tea, but he undeniably has star quality and here his charisma helps carry off an oversimplistic premise, melding comic slapstick with melancholy over the wife and daughter he lost while in jail, and holding every scene he is in. Which is all of them. Without his bruiser presence it wouldn’t work, and I like that it is an unthreatening watch, wearing its violence lightly.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“To its credit, Tulsa King largely avoids both mafia tropes (except to send them up) and redneck clichés, and while it may be a Stallone vehicle, it also proves that the 76-year-old movie star is roadworthy in a TV series format. And while it’s mainstream fare when compared to such sublime mafia fish-out-of-water comedy dramas like Get Shorty and Barry, it’s entertaining, nonetheless.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“The excellent Hong Kong’s Fight for Freedom took things up a notch by using artificial intelligence to alter the faces of the protesters who could be jailed for talking publicly about the protests. It gave them a weird, smooth, plastic look as if they had overdone the Instagram filter, but it’s probably the future. But it didn’t detract from the shocking testimonies of police brutality and the powerful, shaky, hand-held camera footage of police and pro-establishment Triad groups storming trains to beat up people trapped like fish in a barrel.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“We are all guilty of tuning out during news bulletins, or skimming over pages in the newspaper, or thinking that these events are happening far away and don’t directly concern us. Here was a documentary which laid out the issues very simply and clearly, from the protesters’ point of view. The programme-makers also spoke to Western journalists and – in a nod towards balance – to Regina Ip, an adviser to the Hong Kong authorities. But the news reports from the time, and shaky mobile phone footage, were the most compelling aspects.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“If you despair of our politics — and who doesn’t at the moment? — watch Hong Kong’s Fight For Freedom on iPlayer and thank the Lord you don’t live in China.”
Roland White, Daily Mail

“Much has been made about Stuart’s working-class upbringing, and his subsequent escape to the world of New York fashion. The problem is, though, that Alan Yentob spends the entire hour palpably terrified of anyone remotely working class. At one point, Stuart takes Yentob to the Barras market, and the host spends the whole time alternately cowed and spooked by the locals.”
Stuart Heritage, The Guardian

“There was something irritating about the extremely middle class Alan Yentob fetishising Stuart’s working class roots (imagine… a world in which the BBC had working class people in its top ranks) but Stuart spoke intelligently and compassionately. It was lovely, too, to hear from the two art teachers who changed his life by encouraging him to go to college.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph