Lucy Mangan

This Brave New World has nothing to say.

The series will probably benefit from the fact that adults don’t have the bandwidth at the moment to cope with much more than it offers. With any luck, it will buy Alex Rider time to find its feet, decide on its audience and fully realise the vision that floats just underneath the spectacle.

Rare it is to watch a drama about a serial killer that leaves you feeling as though the victims have been done a service. In the end, perhaps the greatest accolade that can be given this sensitive, finely worked piece is that Nilsen himself, attention-seeking narcissist though he was, would surely have hated it.

It is all the most excellent fun. Paulson conveys a fathomless darkness while appearing to do almost nothing. When moments of viciousness break her affectless surface, it is genuinely disquieting.

It’s a light, charming offering.

It may work better if you parcel it out – maintaining, I would suggest, at least the once-traditional week between episodes – rather than binge-watching. That way you can revel in the atmosphere and enjoy the performances and the broad sweep of the thing without getting overwhelmed by the not-quite-crisp-enough plot details, underwhelmed by the various payoffs or distracted by the mounting absurdities.

Katherine herself too often steps across the line from bitch to simple sociopath. ... A little more light and shade would work wonders and still not take it anywhere near Motherland territory, or lead it to be mistaken for any of the other assorted other “mums-go-mad!” offerings that make you wish for Joan Crawford to be reborn and show us all how it should be done.

So far it’s all a little paint-by-numbers.

It can only add valuably to our knowledge, and increase our capacity for nuance when seeking to understand the myriad ways our minds can malfunction and trap us in a hell of our misfiring neurons’ own making. That it can do this while making us laugh with Marnie, and never at her, is barely short of a miracle, but that is what it is. Pure brilliant.

There is a cherishable sense of deftness and overarching control about the whole endeavour that leaves you longing to find out what will happen rather than anxious amid proliferating possibilities. If there is nothing groundbreaking or fabulously innovative here (you can see shades of many previous dramas – most recently perhaps Gold Digger and Deadwater Fell), it is no problem at all. If there is nothing groundbreaking or fabulously innovative here (you can see shades of many previous dramas – most recently perhaps Gold Digger and Deadwater Fell), it is no problem at all. It is a good story well told and those two things, done well, are quite rare enough.

The mystery element and its resolution for Sukey and Elizabeth are not too complicated, psychologically or practically, and nor do they need to be. The real drama exists elsewhere, in bravely impressionistic form held together by superb writing, a complex but immaculate structure and Jackson’s mesmerising, heartbreaking (and funny – as when she cannot remember who the prime minister is but “I know I don’t like him”) performance at its heart.

If the finale loses the absolute delicacy of touch that has marked the rest of the series, as the large emotions surface at last, that is a vanishingly small criticism of an offbeat, charming and moving creation from Minchin and everyone else. It was beaut.

It’s a show with a loving heart that nevertheless manages to remain witty and fleet, doing a lot with every scene and never wasting a minute.

It’s got wit, warmth and charm in abundance, and although it includes adults in its fun it doesn’t cater to them.

What a richly bonkers soup it is.

This is the expensively made, atrociously written, chaotic, borderline-barmy tale.

Take what you have learned from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, through the aforementioned Gone Girl, put more recent memories of The Victim (that one with Kelly Macdonald), The Replacement (that one with Morven Christie and Vicky McClure) in order, stir in scraps from any story you have seen or read with a lost baby at its heart and you are away. Half your work is done and you are free to kick back and enjoy the non-plot elements.

Over The Plot Against America’s six-hour course, Simon and Burns do their usual exceptional work in delicately fitting pieces of a larger and larger puzzle together to reveal a bigger and more complicated picture at every step. If the beginning seems a bit stagey [...] it finds its feet quickly thereafter.

Hitmen may be just a bit too woolly and broadbrush to make a hit in the grander scheme of things. But it finds its target often enough to be more than worth your while.

Little Voice is little short of a horror show.

It is a hilarious, warm, brutal melange that works because it has heart without sentimentality and authenticity without strain.

A funny, fresh reimagining. Building on Martin’s solid, good-hearted tales, it maintains a contemporary feel without losing the old-fashioned charm at its heart.

Overall, Gangs of London promises to be a wild and wildly polished ride, even before the twist at the end of the 90-minute opener.

The slight disbelief and disorientation among the authorities suddenly confronted by the need to turn theory rapidly into practice resonates as the makers must never have envisaged.

It’s not exactly a hagiography, but there is no grit in the oyster.

It is, in short, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement without a false note in it, shot through with humour and with ideas, talent and character to burn at every perfectly plotted turn.

It is slow without being frustrating or dull, thoughtful without being ponderous or pretentious. It has a further advantage of basically adhering to a known formula while sitting slightly at odds with it.

Despite occasional laughs to be gleaned from the twist that Malkovich can give the most unpromising of lines, Space Force is not funny, which makes it hard to class as a comedy.