Lucy Mangan
Select another critic »For 272 reviews, this critic has graded:
-
43% higher than the average critic
-
8% same as the average critic
-
49% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.4 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Lucy Mangan's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Average review score: | 68 | |
---|---|---|
Highest review score: | This Way Up: Season 2 | |
Lowest review score: | The Wedding Coach: Season 1 |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 120 out of 272
-
Mixed: 143 out of 272
-
Negative: 9 out of 272
272
tv
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Lucy Mangan
Every performer is wonderful, not least because the script is wonderful, playing the sex for laughs and the search for intimacy as something serious, good and noble. Not a single character is a cipher – even the smallest parts have a sketched backstory and some good gags.- The Guardian
- Posted Jan 17, 2020
- Read full review
-
- The Guardian
- Posted Jan 13, 2020
- Read full review
-
- The Guardian
- Posted Jan 9, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
Although it registers friendships and fallings-out, it does not make them into soapy storylines. It prefers, equally refreshingly, to dig deep into the many qualities that must combine to make a single performer, and then how they must coalesce into one team.- The Guardian
- Posted Jan 9, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It’s a bloodstained love letter to a classic, beautifully and delicately scented with just the faintest hint of ham gothic yarns need; a homage to all the great Counts who have gone before, but still entirely its own thing. And again, like the best of Gatiss and Moffat’s Sherlocks, with the searching intelligence that promises to flesh out the foundational story. Enjoy sinking your teeth into it all.- The Guardian
- Posted Jan 2, 2020
- Read full review
-
- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 30, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
There is plenty of action, for those who want it, but this is far from the standard wartime miniseries. It is a beautifully turned ensemble piece, with everyone getting their time in the spotlight as we move between locations without anybody’s characters or storylines feeling underbaked.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It was all as gorgeous, breathtaking, moving and harrowing as we have come to expect from this world-leading branch of the BBC. There is nothing to criticise or cavil at here.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
Apart from the novelty of seeing Japan’s capital unfetishised – this is a Tokyo where people live, work and manage the daily grind, not a neon-soaked fun palace or futuristic hellscape – and the odd animated interlude (created by the company behind Hey Duggee, fact fans), nothing here feels new or revelatory.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
There are attempts at knowingness: at one point, our Henry tells someone a prophecy has to rhyme. This is not a good idea, as it throws into too sharp relief the limits to what Geralt and his merry band of sorceresses and proto-feminist princesses can be said to know. Play it straight, dear scriptwriters, or don’t play it at all. ... But again, if you like this sort of thing, go nuts.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
By nearly halfway through the series we have had only a set of decidedly unoriginal revelations revealed in a deeply pedestrian manner. You can feel the on-screen talent longing to let rip, but the script and the structure and the sense just aren’t there.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 6, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
Every relationship – or lack thereof – is beautifully drawn. ... In the second episode, it truly begins to take off and by the end, it is soaring. Bea’s uncompromising character and performance become something to love as well as admire.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 5, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
Socially responsible nature programming that retains all its beauty – we have at last, and at least, come to this.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 5, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
I Love You, Now Die is a superbly perceptive study of the endless convolutions and complexities of the human mind – and the proliferation of both when two people in a desperately unhappy state meet. It succeeds in raising questions – gently, but relentlessly – about our prejudices and our readiness to judge, as individuals and through our institutions, from the media to the courts. Without losing sight of anyone’s misery or loss, it forces nuance – a characteristic increasingly absent from discourse – into the discussion.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 5, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It allows the mind to roam across many questions while the story unspools efficiently before you, asking little in the way of mental or emotional investment and giving much in the way of solidly old-fashioned whodunnitry. Pairs well with apple crumble and custard or large slabs of Dairy Milk.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
This sober, responsible production that has even managed to avoid the temptation of hyping it as Martin Clunes’s first foray into straight drama and aggrandising him or the production at their expense.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
There are no narrative twists awaiting us here. No miscarriages of justice straining to be heard. No insights into the complexities of an unfolding case or scandal of corrupt policemen, judges, clergy or politicians. The tapes themselves are the USP here. ... The only truly chilling thing about Conversations With a Killer was how unchilling it was.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
As a programme, Surviving R Kelly is deeply flawed. At best, it treads a fine line between attesting to the apparent pain of those taking part and exploiting it – and often gives in to temptation.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
Remake Death Race by all means. Put a new twist on the zombipocalypse as The Walking Dead finally lapses into terminal decline, do. But bolting the two together creates distractingly bizarre results.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It is, in short, an immaculately scripted (by Waller-Bridge) and performed (by everyone) half-hour – certainly up there with the best of the first series, and probably up with the best of TV comedy-drama entire.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
They [Nick Hornby, Stephen Frears, Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd] have created something close to a masterpiece (or 10). It seems like a double-marriage of true minds. The quartet make it look effortless, even artless, but every aspect, every frame, every word, every beat is a perfectly considered, crafted and curated thing that creates something even greater than the sum of its parts.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It’s another dazzling Murphy triumph. It has his trademark hurricane of a narrative that sweeps you up and deposits you breathless and agape somewhere else entirely an hour later. He has garnered a set of blistering performances from his actors.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
The parts are all good – the scenery, the performances, the script – but they add up to slightly less than their sum. Perhaps it is the extra exposition that makes it feel too ponderous and prevents it from taking flight.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
There might not be much, narratively, that is new to adult viewers – but is there ever? Still, it is a fresh twist and the evocation of incorruptible Spielbergian innocence that is maintained by centring the show on such young protagonists is restorative to the ageing, battered soul, even if the head cries out that it could have been compressed into six episodes to no detriment and probably quite some benefit.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It is a tasty slice of cut-and-come-again cake, even if the relationship between Cassie and Rob – upon which the credibility of the story turns (or will, if faithful to the books) – is not yet sufficiently close or well-drawn.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
It promises to be a fittingly thoughtful and wholly absorbing last installment.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
While it is fun, and has moments of heart, it also has moments that seem to flirt with period drama parody.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
[Russell T Davies] aerates the heaviest, most fraught issues (from the insidious nature of tech, to income inequality, to the rapidity with which events can become both ancient history and rapidly repeated) with wit and optimism, so that they are no longer a burden, to us or the narrative, but grist to the mental and dramatic mill.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
Nobody does anything stupid, extreme, inconsistent or out of character. The beauty of the script and the performances – which build relationships so delicately and naturally, which modulate so deftly in and out of grief and laughter, and which turn ordinary moments into hilarity and heartbreak without you noticing how they got you there – will take your breath away.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Lucy Mangan
As ever, nothing is wasted; not a scene, not a line, not a beat. For every morsel of information gathered by the team and by the viewer, another turn reveals 100 hidden possibilities. It fits together flawlessly.- The Guardian
- Posted Dec 4, 2019
- Read full review