"From the makers of Slow Horses" comes this trope-laden, Strike rip-off -they even manage to slip in a snide JK Rowling dig on a Woman's Hour-type radio show. But Strike it ain't, and it comes nowhere near the wit or precision of Slow Horses. For a start, it's one of those shows where every male character is either weak, stupid, clownish, or evil, while every woman is good, well-meaning, strong, snarky and dogmatic. The supposed balance of drama and comedy feels like the work of two writers who never met, each convinced the other was doing the heavy lifting. In fact, almost every other line is forced snark, as if someone combed through the script asking, "Hmmm, how would Malcolm Tucker have said this?" So a house explodes, people die, and somehow Ruth Jones is the only person alive to notice some egregious Photoshop differences between two media photos published on the same day. She then becomes obsessed with finding "the sweet little black girl" she used to be. What? And the geography -my god, it's laughable. Oxford must be about 100 metres square, because every time Ruth turns around, she bumps into the next part of the plot. I can't be bothered describing Emma Thompson's character or performance... I don't do panto.

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