Neil Hewitt – Google

It's pretty average and there's far too much unbelievable amateur hour in it to be in any way taken seriously. Ep 1 a supposedly senior bomb squad officer blithely pulls a light switch while they are investigating a bomb, during which they dont even clear the block of flats. Then they clear a cordon without clearing all the vehickes in the carpark and, hugely surprisingly, one blows up in a plot twist so clearly obvious that they might as well have painted "BOOM!" on the side of it. By Ep 2 they are pushing the bomber's abandoned van away from the entrance to their secret lair with a remote control bomb disposal robot (!), but haven't even checked the van out to see if it was booby trapped first. Then they are trundling round the factory like its the office not a crime scene. By Ep 3 where she's hammering seven bells out of some door hinges to get to a hostage, while a bomb with a Mercury switch is hanging on the door in a plastic bag, then gets clumsily manhandled away (hey its not like theres a BOMB a foot away of anything) after her senior officer boyfriend (who is supposed to be running the operation) loses his head and starts yelling hysterically at her and putting her off, it just became a bit of a farce really. Very sloppy work guys, it's just about tolerable TV and better than watching yet another celebrity chef bake off programme but that's about it.

Really enjoyable show. Yes the hilariously long shootouts where one assumes the protagonists were firing whilst blindfolded as they couldnt hit an elephant at 10 feet were a bit lame, but the fast pacing, wisecracking sharp dialogue, music, settings and great casting made it a brilliant watch. The Clarke and Walters lead pairing was terrific. You can mutter it's not serious enough, or its pretty unrealistic, but who cares, it's a good honest weekly dose of proper old school cops vs villains action and we all need a bit of that! Sometimes you just want to be entertained for an hour and it hits that spot. What a shame that with these allegations against Noel Clarke there understandably can't be a recommission for a 4th season at this time. I just hope theres a chance the series might come back, though without Clarke I'm not sure it'd work anything like as well.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

It's an absolute masterpiece. The realism, attention to detail, the stunning battle scenes, wonderful casting, sensitive character development and the music just bring the books vividly to life. I'd imagine it's about as close to life on a 19th century man of war as it's possible to recreate. Its really gritty, the overwhelming impression is of the high human price paid on both sides, rather than the vaingloriousness you ask often see in this sort of thing. By the way, if you havent read the O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books, do so. They're an absolute masterclass in historical fiction. The only sad thing is that the powers that be never used the rich abundance of material (20 books) to make a sequel or 5, with the promise of stories expanding into Stephen's role as an intelligence agent, the squabbling within the admiralty and the rich cast of supporting onshore characters to name just a few, as well as the sea battles. Oh for a series, upon my word!

I really looked forward to this, but after 2 episodes of utter boredom I gave up the unequal struggle of hoping I would actually even start a glimmer of actually caring at all for any of the characters to carry on with it. Its beautifully shot, but the best I can describe it is that its ended up as a sort of flip flop of valium holiday and Westworld with a charisma bypass. A great example of why some books might be better left as books...

Absolutely love it. As a huge fan of the books and the original BBC series, I had low hopes and was honestly just praying it wouldn't be awful. How wrong I was. It's brilliant! Yes they've gone away from the books a bit, both in the detail of the stories and some character ages, prominence and backstory (the original being absolutely true to them), but that just stops it being a slavish copy of the original adaptation, which if you think about it would have been a bit pointless really. It's beautifully acted and shot, and an absolute joy to watch and retains the essential joy, warmth, scenery and spirit of the books. Best of all my whole family absolutely love it, my kids are the same age I was when the BBC version came out, and they are as gripped as I was, which is lovely. Samuel West somehow nails the mercurial Siegfried, in a new way, though it took a couple of episodes imho, and I could never imagine anyone else doing that after Robert Hardy. And Nicholas Ralph makes (dare I say it) a Herriot more like mind's eye saw him than in the BBC series. Please, please commission a second series! And if you havent read the books, what are you waiting for?