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Rachel Cooke

Tomatometer-approved critic
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Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Outrageous: Season 1 (2025) 88% EDIT “I wonder who this is for. If you’re interested in the Mitfords, and have read lots about them, this is a primer of which you’ve no need. If you’re not interested, you’ll be baffled as to what the hell all the fuss is about.” – New Statesman Jun 18, 2025 Full Review Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103: Season 1 (2025) 75% EDIT “It is a strange thing, to be moved by luggage; to be brought almost to tears by the sight of an unwieldy suitcase or a bulging holdall. ” – New Statesman May 22, 2025 Full Review Malpractice: Season 2 (2025) 100% EDIT “Malpractice is still a pretty good watch, and in any case, the major news is that Line of Duty will be back some time quite soon. ” – New Statesman May 13, 2025 Full Review Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes: Season 1 (2025) 89% EDIT “I don’t know if the cast were motivated by any cause, but the result, generous and committed, not only pays tribute to De Menezes, and the shameful circumstances of his death; this is also “J’accuse”, on a scale both subtle and grand.” – New Statesman May 1, 2025 Full Review I, Jack Wright: Season 1 (2025) 100% EDIT “Lang is such a good writer. Plot, dialogue, juicy subtext: he can do them all.” – New Statesman Apr 28, 2025 Full Review Your Friends & Neighbors: Season 1 (2025) 79% EDIT “Its writer, Jonathan Tropper, keeps wimping out. Its producers can’t help themselves. The problem is that, collectively, they’re quite obviously deeply in love with the very things their hero is supposedly coming to despise.” – New Statesman Apr 10, 2025 Full Review This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga: Season 1 (2025) 93% EDIT “Oh, the accents, the clothes, the caterpillar eyebrows! Put aside the gruesome killings and what we're left with is a highly superior Scouse Dallas.” – New Statesman Apr 7, 2025 Full Review Austin: Season 1 (2024) 63% EDIT “I don’t think it will be a smash here. Colin from Accounts it is not.” – New Statesman Apr 2, 2025 Full Review Adolescence: Season 1 (2025) 97% EDIT “The most important thing by far is the cast. These people are acting so superbly well, you can’t even tell that’s what they’re doing: I had to remind myself out loud that it was all artifice.” – New Statesman Mar 13, 2025 Full Review Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero : Season 1 (2025) 75% EDIT “Not even Rhys, Farthing and Huston can save this hot mess of wonky accents and dubious furs. For minutes at a time, nothing happens; people just sit and stare, whether in horror or boredom one is never absolutely sure. ” – New Statesman Mar 6, 2025 Full Review With Love, Meghan: Season 1 (2025) 38% EDIT “To my eyes, With Love, Meghan is just a brazen, turmeric-inflected, lavender-infused punt. One sniff, and you know you’re not buying. ” – New Statesman Mar 5, 2025 Full Review Apple Cider Vinegar: Season 1 (2025) 84% EDIT “This series, though distinctly sugar-coated, has so much to say about life in the 21st century it’s impossible not to feel a tiny bit complicit with some of the various deceptions at which it rather jauntily jabs a finger.” – New Statesman Feb 18, 2025 Full Review The White Lotus: Season 3 (2025) 86% EDIT “As I watched, I caught myself gleefully rubbing my hands together. Part of the show’s intense satisfaction has to do with schadenfreude, and having just shelled out for a new boiler, I can hardly wait for them all to get it.” – New Statesman Feb 13, 2025 Full Review Amandaland: Season 1 (2025) 85% EDIT “In short, it’s genius. Motherland is dead, long live Amandaland!” – New Statesman Feb 11, 2025 Full Review Prime Target: Season 1 (2025) 43% EDIT “Prime Target is addictive, but I don’t think it will stick, ultimately. Even as a curiosity, it’s also instantly forgettable -- and the terrestrial channels still do some things better, even now. ” – New Statesman Jan 22, 2025 Full Review Severance: Season 2 (2025) 94% EDIT “Severance’s principal subject is theft: of time and memory, of identity and humanity. Forgive the hyperbole, but it is the television show for our times, and all the more gut-wrenching for it.” – New Statesman Jan 15, 2025 Full Review Playing Nice: Season 1 (2025) 63% EDIT “The non-challenges in Playing Nice’s non-twists and non-turns are just the thing for a long, dry January. Mostly, though, it’s the fact that watching a superior cast inhabit such ridiculous material is my kind of good, clean, twisted fun.” – New Statesman Jan 7, 2025 Full Review Black Doves: Season 1 (2024) 92% EDIT “If Black Doves is often farcical, its commitment to the unlikely gives it a freewheeling spirit that is as irresistible as it is annoying.” – New Statesman Dec 6, 2024 Full Review Moonflower Murders: Season 2 (2024) 100% EDIT “One of the huge pleasures of these series lies in the fact that, save for McMullan and Manville, the cast each play two roles, one in the real world and the other in Conway’s story. In this sense, it’s like watching high-class theatre.” – New Statesman Nov 19, 2024 Full Review Bad Sisters: Season 2 (2024) 77% EDIT “The age of streaming makes it difficult -- impossible, probably -- for hit series to be one-offs, even those with endings that positively shout: that’s all folks! ” – New Statesman Nov 14, 2024 Full Review Wolf Hall: Season 2 (2024) 100% EDIT “Lewis, of course, does his thing: the very rings on his fingers emanate entitlement. But it’s Rylance who holds us, breathless.” – New Statesman Nov 12, 2024 Full Review The Day of the Jackal: Season 1 (2024) 85% EDIT “This version is more than ten hours long; even at its most pacy, you’re always aware it has been stretched to fit the inexhaustible demands of streaming. But I will go back to it. Redmayne is strangely fascinating to watch.” – New Statesman Nov 7, 2024 Full Review The Franchise: Season 1 (2024) 73% EDIT “It’s fast, knowing and somewhat self-conscious in the same way that, say, the BBC spoof W1A was all of these things; the audience’s enjoyment is predicated on how much it’s prepared to tolerate insider jokes.” – New Statesman Oct 30, 2024 Full Review Rivals: Season 1 (2024) 95% EDIT “It’s very funny; its deepest impulses are satirical. But no one’s winking at the camera, let alone worrying about giving offence. Its stars seem only to be hell bent on giving the performance of their lives.” – New Statesman Oct 15, 2024 Full Review Disclaimer: Season 1 (2024) 77% EDIT “If the preposterousness here is laughable, even more embarrassing is the fact that Cuarón’s script comes with a mimsy narrator, who simply will not stop intoning banalities that pass for wisdom, sometimes even in the second person. It’s excruciating.” – New Statesman Oct 9, 2024 Full Review
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