Deborah Ross

Television’s water-cooler moments are thin on the ground these days. Instead we are bombarded with viewing options on multiple platforms, many of them over-hyped.

Deborah Ross is a wonderfully entertaining and trusted guide. Her weekly column, which has been running for over a decade, navigates a path for readers, steering them towards the programmes it’s worth them investing their time and money in.

She assesses the big shows, giving credit where credit’s due but puncturing the hype if it’s not; shares her passion and anger at documentaries uncovering injustice; plucks out hidden gems that lurk in the schedules; and gives a reasoned judgement of why other shows are best avoided.

Deborah brings to her subject a knowledge and love of television but above all she entertains, writing with wit and verve, often zooming in on a telling detail that makes a show stick in the memory or stick in the craw.

She was left seething by Mr Bates vs The Post Office - ‘It made my blood boil’ - and at the behaviour of some of Avon and Somerset’s police in To Catch A Copper: ‘Your everyday officer is malevolent, predatory and misogynistic and has nothing but contempt for the general public they're meant to be serving.’ She demolished this year’s variation on dating shows, Dating Naked hosted by Rylan: ‘Is there someone off-camera with a big bottle of Flash spraying down the stools and sunbeds after use?’ but was charmed by him in Rob and Rylan’s Grand Tour: ‘Mostly, celebrities on these shows give us none of their inner lives. Rob and Rylan let us in. And I love them for that. In fact, the travel rather got in the way.’

Of the year’s much-heralded shows, she felt Jilly Cooper’s Rivals deserved its plaudits – ‘I think I saw six bare little botties in the first episode alone. It must have been a riot in the writers' room. “Shall we break for lunch now, or after we've thrown a couple more bare bottoms in?”' She was less convinced by Emily Maitlis and A Very Royal Scandal about her Prince Andrew interview, which she found ‘rather too self-admiring‘, and Nicole Kidman’s Expats also got the thumbs-down: ‘There are no twists that twist or turns that turn.’

Deborah comes to the screen with no preconceptions. She’s no fan of sport but was gripped by Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: ‘Flintoff believes in them, and also allows them to be vulnerable by being vulnerable himself… Freddie cried, the lads cried and, of course, so did I.’ She also championed smaller productions including the ‘inventive and original’ reality show The Underdog: Josh Must Win and the ‘pure joy’ of The Assembly in which Michael Sheen dared answer questions from a neurodivergent audience – ‘Julice asks: “How does it feel to be dating someone who is only five years older than your daughter?” Nice one, Julice.’

In a world of knee-jerk, often ill-considered criticism, Deborah Ross’s thoughtful, engaged and witty writing shines through.