The Word On... Red Riding, Channel 4

"The Yorkshire Tourist Board will not be happy with the washed-out, impoverished landscape the show portrays, but at least it is bound to be controversial, and sometimes the best TV is that which divides audiences and creates debate. The first part of the trilogy, '1974', was one of the bleakest television experiences I have seen, but the stellar cast and fantastic script kept me gripped throughout." - WH Winegarden, outsidethebox uk.wordpress.com

"The landscapes are as beautifully crafted as any Andrei Tarkovsky title. The director has created a bleak vision of life in the West Yorkshire of the Seventies. The credit goes to Julian Jarrold, who has a background in crime dramas such as 'Silent Witness' and 'Cracker'." - Keith Emmerson, www.hecklerspray.com

"The adaptation was self-important, set-designed to within an inch of its life, vacuously scripted and directed for visual impact rather than narrative sense." - Tom Morton, beatcroft. blogspot.com

"It's rare that a drama of this quality comes along, and those of us paid to be TV critics cannot criticise even a minor pedantic detail – or at least, this one can't... 'Red Riding: 1974' was faultless." - primetime.unrealitytv.co.uk