Lucy Mangan

The first episode concentrates almost entirely on the first raid, virtually recreating it in real time. What it doesn’t do here or in the succeeding episodes is contextualise or dig deeper into events. ... A braver documentary might have wanted to investigate a route from Mount Carmel 1993 to Capitol Hill 2021 but this one is happy to settle for spectacle and survivors’ stories over substance. Which is not to say the survivors’ stories aren’t moving.

Everything we want and need is still here. ... The opening episodes of each season of Succession tend to subsume the family dynamic in the corporate intrigue, because there are always so many pieces not just to set up but to explain to a lay audience. This seems to have opted for a more equal balance.

The plot becomes rapidly and pleasingly complicated without losing any sense of narrative.

Extrapolations is at its best when it finds the sweet spot between lecturing and enlightening, but these moments don’t come frequently enough. More often it finds itself stuck at the student debate level set in the first episode.

It cuts the sweetness with just enough vinegary exchanges to prevent the whole from becoming sickening. It keeps the main man just the right side of folksy rather than village idiot, and knowing that every tiny glimpse into Coach Beard’s hinterland is worth the price of admission alone.

It is clearly a heartfelt film, but not blinkered, and while his personality suffuses the whole, he makes sure to get out of the way of the women telling their stories and lets them own the screen for as long as they need.

Although the series gains more heft after Billy gets out of rehab, and more torque once Daisy arrives, Daisy Jones & the Six never properly comes to life. It’s all a little too slick and sanitary.

Many questions. But all, I suspect, with answers, and not very complex ones at that. That – along with the spooky basement records room opened by a key with a giant brass keyring stamped “RECORDS”, and a decadent members-only nightclub that has transformed into generic office space by morning and assorted other hokum essentials – is what makes it fun, and perfectly, perfectly fine. As I said: no more, no less.

You can applaud the ambition while wishing they had reined themselves in just a little more and made sure the whole was properly fit for purpose – and the showcase Cooper and Hizli certainly deserve.

There is nothing madly innovative here. ... Nevertheless, it neatly avoids cliche and Oirishness. It has genuine charm, which is to say it is suffused with wit, warmth and compassion.

The series amounts to less and less as time goes on. From the staged conceit to Clarkson’s contempt, the bad faith of every aspect of Jeremy Fills the Airwaves is so nakedly on display that each moment feels as if it is hollowing itself out from the inside.

Wreck has got charm, it’s got a little bit of wit, it’s got youthful exuberance and energy, and even if it never develops much more than that (only one episode was available for review at time of writing), it will justify its place in the schedules.

[Harrison Ford's] dry delivery of Paul’s acerbic one-liners and verdicts on his younger colleagues’ antics provides a much-needed counterpoint to the schmaltz that often threatens to overwhelm, and his gravitas grounds a show whose fluffy pieces could otherwise easily float away.

Extraordinary is fun but does begin to feel, once the initial playfulness of the premise has worn off, underbaked. ... But it’s got just enough heart and good, unexpected one-liners (under the spell of a job interviewer who can make people tell the truth, Jen admits “I’m sitting funny ’cause my tampon’s falling out”) to keep you coming back for more and to mark 28-year-old debut writer Emma Moran as one to watch.

The makers have obviously worked under a laminated sign saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and who can blame them? The same character traits are all there, if redistributed among the youngsters’ parts.

There is less Willow (Renika Williams), so far, than last time, which is a great sadness. But the rest are all present, correct and adding to the general sense of a show bursting with good things: talent, energy and wit to burn.

The sleaze, glamour and general air of excess that hung about the 80s is nicely captured, and all eight episodes can be easily binged. But you do long for some depth, some nuance, and perhaps an actor less fundamentally gentle than Kumail Nanjiani, who might have captured more convincingly the darkness lurking in Banerjee’s soul.

It’s a modern take on an old narrative form, and if there’s nothing as earthshaking dramatically speaking as whatever the Big Bad is managing as it comes for our crew, the need to know what’s what – including Glen’s Secret Sorrow and the role Mark Addy, who has yet to turn up unless I’ve failed to spot him under all the safety gear, is going to play – and the faith that it won’t all descend into a Lost-style debacle will keep you going until the end.

The warp and weft of lives, of life, is as expertly woven as ever and you couldn’t wish for a better group of actors to bring it to you. Happy new year.

This shouldn’t have been a rush job. There has been the opportunity to work on the story of his life and his death and transmute it – especially in a time when dictatorial regimes, violence and governmental lawlessness are in the ascendant – into something better, broader, more meaningful than this.

This latest offering from the crack team and Sir David accomplishes its goal as effectively as ever; it makes us, in the best way, children again. You cannot stay unengaged, you cannot remain unmoved by the sight of nature in all her glory, or unawed by the sight of creatures honed by countless years of evolution to survive the apparently unsurvivable.

Do you miss noise and bombast? Do you miss goodhearted, mindless entertainment? Do you miss the 80s? The 90s? Well, take heart, my friends, because they’re all back, courtesy of the new Disney+ series National Treasure: Edge of History.

In the end – what are we left with? Exactly the same story we always knew, told in the way we would expect to hear it from the people who are telling it.

It is as gripping, fun and stylish as the acclaimed Giri/Haji, without quite its narrative innovation. But it is stuffed with good performances, knotty problems and is compelling enough to keep even those of us who, much as we may wish otherwise, don’t quite understand what’s going on coming back for more.

The drama does a good job of making the victims – Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth, Jack Taylor (portrayed with depth, vigour and sweetness by Tim Preston, Jakub Svec, Leo Flanagan and Paddy Rowan, respectively) – live again. ... Beyond that, and despite the usual great work of Sheridan Smith (as Anthony’s mother, Sarah) and others, the drama never catches fire.

An astoundingly tough, vigorous, sinewy thing without a wasted word or moment. Freeman – who must have fallen on it like a hungry dog – does every bit of it justice. ... The Responder is as fast and riveting as a thriller and as harrowing as a documentary.

It is not a series designed to dig deep into these issues, but it is rare that they are even touched upon as part of a grand sweep such as Planet Sex, and along with Delevingne’s unexpectedly strong presenting skills and directness, it lifted the whole. I love this for us.

It’s a perfectly serviceable script and the two leads – newcomer Jemma Carlton as Carr and Line of Duty’s Scott Reid as Huntley – wring every bit of truth and nuance out of it that they can. ... Virtually all other characters are banished to the periphery. The police investigating the case are no more than ciphers, and Jane (Natalie Britton), the brash London journalist, is there to do no more than enable an underbaked exploration of press freedom and journalistic responsibility.