ITV
Joan, ITV1 review - the roller-coaster career of a 1980s jewel thiefSaturday, 05 October 2024If you’re looking for an advertisement for how crime doesn’t pay, Joan will do very nicely. Written by Anna Symon, this six-part series is based on the memoirs of real-life jewel thief Joan Hannington, whose light-fingered accomplishments earned her... Read more... |
Red Eye, ITV review - Anglo-Chinese relations tested in junk-food thrillerMonday, 06 May 2024Aircraft hijacking is a ghoulishly popular theme in films and TV, but Red Eye brings a slightly different twist to the perils of air travel. This time, North China Air’s Flight 357, from London to Beijing, hasn’t been hijacked, but it has become the... Read more... |
Passenger, ITV review - who are they trying to kid?Thursday, 28 March 2024The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan, Passenger ends up resembling a bunch of ingredients looking for a cake. While characters come out with such meta-observations as “this isn’t Twin Peaks” and “this isn’t Broadchurch” – Buchan having... Read more... |
Mr Bates vs The Post Office, ITV1 review - a star-packed account of an incendiary storySaturday, 06 January 2024There isn’t a troupe officially called the Worshipful Company of British Character Actors, but there probably should be, given the sterling service it does for the nation, acting in prestige TV dramas based on real events. Toby Jones and Monica... Read more... |
Best of 2023: TVMonday, 01 January 2024TV viewers can hardly complain about a lack of choice these days, though they might baulk at funding an ever-lengthening list of subscriptions.There are some who argue, for example, that it’s worth paying for Apple TV+ solely to gain access to the... Read more... |
Malpractice, ITV1 review - she got into a mess on the NHSMonday, 24 April 2023This skilfully-woven drama about an NHS doctor being battered by professional and personal pressures is undoubtedly timely, and benefits greatly from being written by Grace Ofori-Attah, a former NHS doctor herself. Her inside knowledge lends weight... Read more... |
Endeavour: The Final Episode, ITV1 review - the final bow for Oxford's finestWednesday, 15 March 2023Endeavour first landed way back in 2012, and suddenly here we are, bidding it a final farewell after the end of its ninth series. Not everybody learned to love Shaun Evans as the pre-John Thaw Inspector Morse, but some of us may even have come to... Read more... |
Stonehouse, ITV review - history repeats itself as farceThursday, 05 January 2023A disclaimer in the opening credits confessed that some scenes in this three-part history of disgraced Labour MP John Stonehouse had been “imagined for dramatic purposes”, but there was no need. The man’s life story fell comfortably into the “you... Read more... |
Doc Martin Christmas Special, ITV review - Santa comes to Portwenn as the final curtain fallsTuesday, 27 December 2022In 10 series stretching over the last 18 years, ITV's Doc Martin unobtrusively became an enduringly popular household name, but it finally reached the end of the road with this Christmas one-off. Unless, of course, there’s a prequel, a sequel, an... Read more... |
Karen Pirie, ITV review - cold case mystery drags itself across the finish lineMonday, 10 October 2022Although plaudits have been rolling in for Lauren Lyle’s smart and sparky portrayal of the titular detective in Karen Pirie (ITV), getting to the end of the third and final episode felt like a long slog. The traditional ITV two-hour slot is of... Read more... |
Van der Valk, Series 2 Finale, ITV review - sleaze, corruption and skulduggery in AmsterdamMonday, 22 August 2022Despite the jarring effect of having British actors speaking colloquial English while purporting to be Dutch policemen working in Amsterdam, the second series of ITV’s Van der Valk arrived at its third and final episode feeling as if it had reached... Read more... |
Murder in Provence, ITV review - a little light sleuthing amid fabulous French sceneryTuesday, 02 August 2022Connoisseurs of the Britbox streaming service may already have caught up with this three-part series, which has evidently been pressed into service on ITV to pad out TV’s annual summer slump. They could have called it Midsomer Murders Goes to the... Read more... |
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