Critics’ choice

I caught an intriguing session at the Cheltenham literary festival, titled ‘Secrets of the TV Critics’. As it happened, the main secret seemed to be that some of them liked a drink while they watched the box. In the distant days before advance DVDs and internet previews, one critic of the Daily Express used to sit in front of an entire evening’s television with a bottle of whisky. At 10.45 he would phone the copytakers and dictate what he thought. At least he was duplicating the experience of most viewers, which is more than we critics do now.

Kate Harwood, the BBC’s ‘drama head of series and serials’, revealed what everyone suspected, which is that television reviewers are far less important than previewers — the people who write about what’s coming up. (In the US, all reviews are actually previews, for good reason. Who would want to read the critique of a play only after they had been to see it?) My guess is that word of mouth is far more influential than both. When it comes to hits such as The Killing and The Great British Bake-Off, what’s said over coffee or at work counts more than anything in print.

Twitter is increasingly crucial. My colleague Grace Dent of the Guardian cheerfully admitted to letting a show run on while she did the housework, breaking off only when she hears something interesting. She scours Twitter to find what people are talking about, and if a show reaches critical mass, she’ll make sure she’s got an opinion. Alison Graham, the chief previewer for Radio Times, spends five days a week, eight hours a day, sitting with headphones in a cubicle (‘too hot in summer, too cold in winter’) doing nothing but watch TV.