Westworld; The Real Camilla; Secret Agent Selection

“Happily, season two appears to have rewritten the sometimes glitchy season one code. With the Reckoning underway, Westworld is blossoming into the show it is supposed to be. While this extra-long first episode isn’t perfect, it nevertheless suggests the presence of a newfound gusto and energy.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian

“Westworld is back with a buffet of gore, an overload of philosophical questions and an unexpected full-frontal of Lee Sizemore’s todger. This episode was at times meandering, at times hyper-focused. The scene in which an empowered Dolores on horseback shot people as they ran for their lives in slow-mo to Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer was magnificent.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Westworld’s individual style has been replaced by something that feels corporate, as if every scene had to be approved by a committee of producers. The set-piece tableaux and the close-ups of blood-spattered faces look as though they were drawn for comicbooks. The characters are taking themselves very seriously, a sure sign of a TV show that’s too successful for its own good.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The Real Camilla: HRH the Duchess of Cornwall was only revelatory if you had literally never seen her before. This 70th birthday celebration was precisely a puff piece with about as much bite as a desiccated mollusc.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph

“It’s obvious that the Palace will want to increase public approval of Camilla before Charles becomes king. But let’s not lay it on with a shovel; Camilla does seem, once you’d waded through the superlatives, a decent sort who’d be a laugh over a gin and tonic. The love-bombing, it turned out, was quite unnecessary.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“The rapid mix of history and reality show makes this series throughly absorbing. Clips of newsreel and glimpses of an agent’s file from the Forties are a reminder that we owe our freedom to fighting men and women like these.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“The challenge started out rather dully, with lots of people counting seconds and advancing slowly. In the later stages, though, it had the quality of one of those plucky war films of the early Sixties. For the first time, in this barren, stripped-back setting, there seemed to be some link between the stories of the real SOE heroes and the trials being undertaken on screen.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express