ITV
Adam Sweeting
There's nothing like a tale set in a warm, exotic climate to lure in the viewers in damp and wintry northern Europe. Send the Nonnatus House midwives to South Africa for Christmas! Shoot a ridiculous detective drama in Guadeloupe! Go back to the Raj with Channel 4's Indian Summers!It's an old trick and it always works, and it probably will here as well. The title of The Good Karma Hospital makes it sound like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with added doctors and nurses, but thanks to a crisp and often witty script by Dan Sefton, it stands a good chance of establishing a distinctive identity Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The main attraction of this new US sitcom for a UK audience is that two British actors - Stephen Fry and Susannah Fielding – appear in it. The basic premise is that Jack Gordon, a famed reporter, has led a thrilling outdoorsman life, writing about his adventures for the magazine Outdoor Limits. But then his editor, Roland (Fry), recalls him to the office in downtown Chicago and tells him the publication is going web-only, and that he will now be writing about the great outdoors from, well, the not-so-great indoors.Jack (Joel McHale, pictured below with Fry) is, in best sitcom fashion, a fish Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Historic unsolved murders have become their own mini-genre, with the likes of Cold Case lurking in the small print of the schedules and Silent Witness still going strong in its 20th series. A hit the first time out in 2015, Unforgotten is back with a new investigation of another mystery cadaver.This time, the deceased was dredged out of the River Lea in north-east London, having been crammed into a suitcase (post-mortem, one hopes). Detectives Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) were promptly down on the riverbank, poking at the mysterious plasticky skin of the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The most surprising thing about ITV's latest period drama is that they've scheduled it for Monday nights. Since you could soundbite it as a mash-up of Mr Selfridge and Downton Abbey, you'd have thought The Halcyon was a shoo-in for that peachy Sunday-night slot.But no, the latter niche will be filled (from next Sunday) by the returning Endeavour, while The Halcyon must fight its way through the choppier waters of the working week, hoping that harassed commuters will still be seeking a bit of historic escapism after another day of trench warfare on the railways. And it may be in luck, because Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
So this is Christmas – and what have they done? Scheduled a detective drama that begins with a family being carved up with an axe. Ho ho ho! While Maigret’s Dead Man was no doubt intended to provide a healthy corrective to the festive feel-goodery of Call The Midwife on BBC One, it goes too far. We could have done without the details of torture (a candle-flame to naked breasts) and bloody execution. At least it doesn’t show them (the details, not the breasts).Nor is there any sign of Noël in the rues moyennes de Paris (Hungary once again standing in for France). Happily, though, this is a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the end, what makes a good drama series? It’s probably that you want more of it. This is the end of Cold Feet until a next time which has already been promised, and more is certainly what’s wanted. No one was quite sure if a reincarnation of Cold Feet was a good idea eight episodes ago. Back when the characters were in their 30s the show slowly turned into a bit of a weight round its own neck. Fay Ripley opted out of one season. Helen Baxendale was written out of another. The show began looking under rocks for characters to replace the ones who weren’t there. Eventually it ran out of steam Read more ...
Jasper Rees
One down, eight childbirths to go. The young Queen Victoria was delivered of her first child at the climax of this moreish opening series, and the bells of Windsor tolled for joy. ITV, debutant scriptwriter Daisy Goodwin and biographical consultant AN Wilson will be feeling parental pride that between them they have given birth to a healthy 10-pound whopper that looks very much like the natural heir to Downton.Victoria took its cue from dynastic romance to tell the story of a proto-feminist teen thrust into the limelight like a 19th-century pop starlet forced to grow up on the job. The story Read more ...
Jasper Rees
They keep on coming, these crime dramas, from every direction. The Viking invasion continues, the co-productions with France, the ongoing American global takeover. Meanwhile back in Blighty, Red Productions have been a reliable source of quality drama since the 1990s. Their most recent forays into crime have both involved Sally Wainwright: Happy Valley was theirs, and so was Scott & Bailey. Their latest, modishly, is an international collaboration: Paranoid, a new eight-parter set somewhere quiet and northern, was made in conjunction with Studio Canal and is destined for Netflix.In one Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You can usually tell a show is in trouble when it executes one of its main characters. By the end, Cold Feet had run out of gas. Its instinct to laugh at life rubbed up against genuine grief, and there was nowhere for it to go but off air. But 13 years on here we are again. Historical precedent suggests it has no right to work. This Life didn’t profit when exhumed and nor in the end did Upstairs Downstairs. But if Cold Feet was your thing, it looks so far as if it still will be.What’s changed? Everything but also nothing. Adam (James Nesbitt) is now working in Singapore and after an Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
From the schoolroom straight to the throne: it was a rapid rise for 18-year-old Victoria, and managing as monarch wasn’t helped when everyone around you had their own agenda and was raring to act on your behalf. Moving nicely from TARDIS to palace – and mercifully from Alexandrina (even worse as the shorter 'Drina) to Victoria – Jenna Coleman in the title role combined wide-eyed innocence with an independence and hints at a steelier impetuosity that delivered well in this opening episode (of eight) of what has already been dubbed the new Downton.And not only because of its primetime Sunday Read more ...
Barney Harsent
And so we come to the end of the most spiteful, divisive and downright deceitful political campaign in living memory. And while we’re on the Ds, I’ll have disingenuous too, thanks. The remain camp was captained by a mildly Eurosceptic prime minister, who called the referendum in an attempt to secure an election victory, while Brexit has been spearheaded by a shambolic, and mildly Europhile, thatched homunculus, who simply wants the other guy’s job. We are, essentially, collateral damage in a spectacularly damaging career move.But with the shouting is over, it’s time for the really important Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Never in the field of human voting has so much been demanded of so many by so few... Triggered by a moment of prime ministerial hubris and made reality by a Tory leadership bid and the relentless UKIP catcalls, the referendum is putting control of our EU membership into the hands of a British public who are heavy on emotion, but light on facts.Not that this is surprising. When predicting the future, points tend to be moot, and this has meant that both campaigns have been based largely on fear and self-interest. The one thing that has shone through so far is a horrible disregard for the Read more ...