Ed Cumming

Anne is well written, tense, beautifully acted, unrelentingly sad and angry. It does everything a drama ever could. I’m just not sure I can watch.

The lesson of this derivative but watchable thriller is that if you spend enough time around bombs, the choice might end up being made for you.

It’s a difficult dynamic, solicitor and brat, but Ifeachor in particular gives a performance that captures the contradictions of the legal system, where clients they don’t like, who have potentially done reprehensible things, must be defended to the best of the lawyer’s ability. But in order to be truly gripping, these sorts of dramas must work as character studies as well as thrillers, and the dialogue doesn’t always live up to its ambition.

One of the best of the year so far. ... Kay’s irreverence means he builds a more detailed and believable world than other medical dramas.

O’Casey makes a confident debut, as Vivien’s ingenue sweetness hardens in her rough new circumstances. Her chemistry with Varey sustains the plot through some of its more abrupt turns.

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany play the warring spouses. They are both exceptional, and while the case has fewer moving parts than the Thorpe affair, less political machination, the result is just as compelling. ... We have a candidate for the most stylish drama of the year. One of the saddest, too.

There are one or two laughs, mostly from Merchant, but the overall effect is very BBC comedy, and not entirely in a good way. This schtick can work, but it needs a lot of charm to compensate for the complete absence of glamour. From this first hour, it’s not clear whether The Outlaws has it.

For its varied cast Peaky has never been a true ensemble performance, but now the other characters feel like minor moons around the strange and terrifying planet Tommy.

The Tourist, directed by Chris Sweeney (and Daniel Nettheim for the final three episodes), knows how to play the quiet scenes alongside the crash and bang. ... The Tourist might be his [Jamie Dornan's] best work yet. He takes advantage of a script that lets him stretch his metaphorical muscles as well as the more literal ones, abundant as they are.

Its pretensions to commentary on the Nineties are undermined by a curious mix of comedy, drama and period piece.

It’s perfectly watchable, and every intention and motive is signposted with Fellowes’s usual clarity. ... The Gilded Age would like you to think it is a missing Henry James novel, but it feels broad-brush by comparison.

While the dual narrative structure creates a sense of foreboding and of history repeating itself, it comes at the price of undermining some of the dramatic tension. Every time the claustrophobia builds, we are thrown back into another timeline.

While its cast are generally likeable, and there’s a certain freshness about its commitment to being two things at once, too often it isn’t amusing enough to be enjoyed as pure comedy, or tense enough to be appreciated as a murder mystery. Too often it relies on basic puns, or sophomoric self-referentiality, to get a cheap gag rather than developing more complicated ones.

London and Paris look nearly identical here, perhaps both shot on the same block in Romania. In every frame, you can sense corners being cut. ... TV is finally in a position to faithfully remake Around the World in 80 Days, so why not give it the treatment it deserves?

It is exactly what it is, harmless escapism, and on its own terms it is enormously successful. We wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s subversive, but Emily in Paris is definitely in on the joke. It winks at the audience. We know this is all ridiculous, it says, but don’t worry about it. Just keep watching.

The script, by Tom Edge, who wrote the Oscar-winning Judy Garland film Judy, gets everything going at a brisk clip. The boat looks fantastic, more like a spaceship than the usual cramped tin can. The cast are solid throughout.

If Sinclair’s bold concept and script lift it well above the average crime drama, the direction, by Will Sharpe, is what makes Landscapers unforgettable. ... [Colman and Thewlis] get plenty of screen time, and anchor the more out-there moments in patient, believable characters.

It is a monument to The Beatles, enormous and revealing, which acts as a bulwark against the endless books and articles and chatter about them by simply showing them as they were. In part, it is a corrective, but it is also a fortification. Any future assessment of the band and its members will have to measure up against the people we see here.

Somehow, they stretch it to five episodes, going over the death of Carole’s second husband, Don Lewis, whom Joe and his crew suspect was murdered by Baskin, and looking at what Jeff Lowe, who took over the park after Joe’s imprisonment, has done with the business. It’s all icky.

Given the size of its canvas, Dopesick is a remarkable achievement, which clearly lays out the facts of the slow-burning tragedy, with lots of helpful date reminders, without losing track of the human stories behind it.

The shocking revelations pile up too quickly to be given fair treatment. Even the most destructive unravelling has to go at its own pace, especially on quiet streets like these.

It is not easy to watch, and you won’t want to do more than one episode at a time. ... Their [Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain's] performances earn Scenes from a Marriage its place at the table.

The North Water has a great cast, an expensive boat, a dark and engaging story, and a sinister mood.

The execution doesn’t always match up to the ambition, but in its best moments Kevin Can F**k Himself walks a brilliantly uneasy line between comedy and drama.

The whole thing is shot in the gloom, as if to remind viewers what blindness might be like, but when you can discern what you’re looking at there is some spectacular cinematography. ... But See can never decide whether it wants to be a portentous Big Theme drama, rich in biblical and philosophical allusion, or a happy-go-lucky dystopian stab-em-up.

One of several refreshing qualities in The Chair is that it puts the ostensible outsider immediately in a position of authority. The question for Dr Kim is not how she’ll gain power, but how she’ll wield it. ... But if anything lets The Chair down it’s that it rounds off too many of its sharp edges.

This script stretches even Hawes’s versatility. She’s required to quick-switch between distressed, wry, exasperated, shocked, warm, baffled and angry. Pappas has an easier time of it, as Charlotte’s role is a more straightforward voice of reason amid the cascading revelations. The senior roles are mostly one-note, and don’t give the actors much chance, charming as it always is to see Lumley.

Even in this nightmarish vision of paradise, there are plenty of human remains, and this sharp, funny series, quite possibly the comedy of the year so far, is all the richer for it.