Richard “knutsfordchap” T

A Midsomer Murder style adaptation of the Shardlake novels, lacking verve, drama, and humour. It's the sort of inoffensive pap fed to daytime TV, with about half the acting chops of Murder, She Wrote. The location used is bizarre - rather than a reasonable monastery they decided to go with Corvin Castle in Hungary, one of the largest castles in the world, so everything was completely out of kilter. No monastic lands to speak of, just this huge ruddy castle. Arthur Hughes was an anonymous Shardlake, Sean Bean was clearly brought in to offer some gravitas and just ended up being wasted, and the rest of the cast were completely forgettable. Not even worthy of being called a poor man's Wolf Hall - this was just drivel.

A fantastic series, based on the first two brilliant books from Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies (the final book is due to be adapted in 2024). Rarely does a TV series do full justice to its literary parent, but Wolf Hall really does pull that off. An exceptional cast, a brooding, dangerous atmosphere set right in the heart of Henry VIII's capricious, vindictive, selfish and self-centred reign, when you could easily find yourself falling from the dizzying heights of Court favour and right into the clutches of the executioner. Think of this as a grown-up's Tudors - there's no bodice-ripping nonsense, no smouldering looks and cleft chins, instead this is Atmosphere with a capital A, Tudor life played out in all its cruelty and barbarism, its machinations and its unfairness, and gliding through it all, walking that thinnest of tightropes, Mark Rylance's Thomas Cromwell. Absolutely superb stuff.

One of the most over-hyped, poorly acted and abysmally written shows I've suffered through in a very long time. (Honourable exceptions for Callum Scott Howells as Colin, who was genuinely very good, and Neil Patrick Harris.) Olly Alexander as Richie was utterly dreadful - it was an embarrassing, toe-curling performance of over-the-top camp. Omari Douglas was similarly awful - it's as though he watched Kinky Boots and decided to out-drag Lola. Clearly the idea was to show how fun! and vivacious! the gay scene was in the early 80s, by showing young men having sex with as many partners as possible, with AIDS looming large on the horizon. The problem is that it just portrayed gay men as wilfully promiscuous, and blasé about the threat of AIDS. I think Russell T Davies has actually done a great deal of harm with his terrible portrayal of gay men - where being gay is shown to be purely sexual, almost animalistic, rather than about love or relationships. The final episode was beyond believable - of course the straight parents turn up, and of course they are dreadful, uncaring and cruel. What should have been a gut-wrenching look at the way AIDS destroyed so many lives, made sex a terrifying prospect for gay and straight alike, instead showed us a vapid, obnoxious, sex-obsessed and ignorant gay lifestyle in which AIDS was passed from bed to bed. Thoroughly awful.

What a shame. This started well, with an ominous unravelling of a tragedy, but ended with a totally underwhelming conclusion. Poor, poor writing.

Had high hopes for this, especially off the back of the wonderful What We Do in the Shadows, but this is sub-par stuff. The hammy acting is too far beyond parody, the writing is too obvious and too broad, and the whole thing feels like a student project. A rare dud for Jemaine Clement, but what a dreadful dreadful dud.

One of the greatest mini-series ever produced. Strong casting, great script, beautifully, harrowingly, terrifyingly filmed, and with a spectacular score by Hildur Guðnadóttir all made this utterly spellbinding.