The hypocrisy of Zara McDermott’s disordered eating documentary
The BBC can’t pretend a show hosted by a fitness influencer who posted restrictive meal plans on Instagram is a…
ByTV reviews
Discover compelling insights into the latest TV shows with our selection of reviews, providing critical analysis, expert opinions, and captivating commentary on the most popular and thought-provoking series.
Why I love SAS Rogue Heroes, a carnival of macho nonsense
Steven Knight’s new series with Dominic West strikes a tone midway between war comics and a Duran Duran video –…
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What Sidney Poitier stood for
Burdened by the expectations of black people around the world, the Oscar-winning actor embodied grace even under fire.
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Channel 4’s Made in the 80s shows how history repeats itself
High inflation, endless strikes, the spectre of nuclear war: it doesn’t take a genius to notice the painful similarities.
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Daisy May Cooper’s Am I Being Unreasonable? is dark, strange comedy
Cooper’s follow-up to This Country is part Julia Davis, part Motherland – with the odd flash of genius.
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Adam Curtis’s magic lantern through Russia
The documentary-maker’s new series shows how a country traumatised by the failures of communism and capitalism ended up with Vladimir…
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The Elon Musk Show is a portrait of a disturbingly boyish billionaire
This BBC documentary reveals Musk to be more of an overgrown toddler than a visionary. His success seems almost accidental.
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The Walk-In should be gripping – but this is a made-by-numbers neo-Nazi drama
Stephen Graham plays an undercover anti-fascist – but each scene in this ITV series is more unsurprising than the last.
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Politics is not a joke. But middle-class Brits treat it like one
Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You gave rise to a chummy, point-scoring attitude that harms us…
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Michael Winterbottom’s This England is odd and oddly repellent
Kenneth Branagh has captured Boris Johnson’s striding stoop and gibbon arm-swing, but this series is perhaps too kind to him.
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Inside Man is the TV equivalent of a game of chess
Turn away from Steven Moffat’s crime drama for even a moment, and you’ll literally lose the plot.
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Industry is porn posing as prestige TV
This supposedly gritty BBC drama offers a gratuitous, outlandish depiction of Gen Z sex. But what really grates is its…
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Gutsy: this “feminist” series from Hillary and Chelsea Clinton is risible and bizarre
Whether they are meeting feminist superstars, farting clowns or Goldie Hawn, Hils and Chels sound like they hardly know one…
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Sporting Notes: At the crease with Harold Pinter
Playing cricket with him for the theatrical team Gaieties CC, I witnessed the great playwright’s passion up close.
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Have we reached peak TV crime drama?
The identikit approach to making television is beginning to be embarrassing. Exhibit A: ITV’s new series The Suspect.
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Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 overlooks the festival’s most disturbing problem – sexual assault
This Netflix documentary treats violence against women as an afterthought and mythologises a toxic environment.
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Stefan Golaszewski’s Marriage is a stone-cold masterpiece
Nicola Walker and Sean Bean are both marvellous in this realistic, empathetic BBC drama portraying an ordinary, loving couple
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Amazon’s Arsenal documentary All or Nothing is just another corporate product
These press-released, drama-free films could be sold along with all the other merch at the Emirates Stadium.
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The world still needs Neighbours
The Australian soap offered its audience an alternative, sunnier reality. During the pandemic I needed that escapism more then ever.
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The Newsreader: the authentic din of an 80s Aussie newsroom
This Australian drama, now on the BBC, is well-written, well-acted, and gorgeous to look at.
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