Camilla Long

Camilla Long doesn’t take any prisoners. She is unfailingly honest about her response to what she is watching, even if it is a show brimming with national treasures surfing a wave of critical acclaim - or Netflix generated hype - and seems to demand instant genuflection. Every Sunday she delivers a killer mix of irreverent, sparky prose and acute insights.

Take David Nicholl’s One Day, a drama laden with shimmering stars and so lauded it was as if Britain was still trapped in lockdown. Camilla asks herself: “why would I attack this? What's wrong with me? It's not that bad. It would be like killing a kitten.” Then she jack-knifes, addressing the reader directly, and defies them not to read on,“Which is why you're lucky to have me.”

Hardly a surprise then that Camilla’s review was one of the biggest hits on the website that month, with readers devouring every last word.

Yet Camilla isn’t an outstanding critic just because she can savage a show deftly while making us snort with laughter. She scours the over-crowded schedules for excellence, brings unexpected gems to her readers’ attention and delivers them wrapped with insight and intelligence.

Just when viewers were growing wary of the nightly news horrors of Gaza and Ukraine, Camilla struck upon a remarkable, once-in-a-generation documentary on Channel 4, 20 Days in Mariupol. This was a lesson for television - and journalism - about how to make war meaningful, she declared. “You take a camera and you turn it, unflinchingly, on the most awful things, and you explain, in a soft, even murmur, why you are doing it. This film is horrible, searing, a pristine example of objectivity; it is shockingly graphic. It should be taught in every journalism school, watched in every living room.” Of course, the joy of Camilla’s cocktail of a television column is that she then pivots, and skewers the celebrity inanities of the Oscar ceremony.

For her last submission, Camilla tackles Philip Schofield’s Cast Away and identifies it as the perfect TV solution for a man who just wants to talk about himself (and whom no one wants to work with). “It turns out that flying, angrily, for 33 hours to eat bitter mangos on an untouched desert island just off Madagascar isn't what Schofield wanted to do. What he really wanted to do was slag off as many people as possible. He might as well have done the whole thing on Clapham Common.

What makes Camilla’s reviews stand out is their unsparing gaze into the heart of a show, matched with a prose style that, to borrow from Raymond Chandler, isn’t afraid to kick a hole in a stained glass window on a Sunday morning. Readers know they are going to get something fresh, smart and different from her. It’s a voice for those who like an extra shot in their coffee.