The Independent

The film-makers would have to be acquitted on the charges of cynical exploitation; the drama was positively arthritic with good intentions. But I might well be feeling distinctly aggrieved that a personal sorrow had been transmuted into such poor art. The unfortunate truth is that to be better as drama, it would have had to be more offensive to the bereaved, not less.

It would have had to encompass the ambiguities of public reaction to the case, and the tremor of jocularity that attended the story. Here, none of the policemen made off-colour jokes, and nor did they waver from their solemn resolution to convict the killer.

They weren't characters so much as informational pack-horses, trudging on with a beginner's guide to computer software systems or an indignant aside about the leniency of the General Medical Council's discipline.

The Guardian

The drama itself was powerful, dramatic and unsensational. Michael Eaton's measured script was pacy but dignified. There were no attempts to liven up the story by introducing flashy conventions from police drama, and as testament to its seriousness of purpose, it resisted any easy demonisation of the doctor and didn't speculate upon the involvement of Shipman's wife, Primrose, in his killing career.

The Times

When life didn't slap hard enough, the Hyde GP Dr Harold Shipman liked to give it a helping hand. Shipman (ITV1), a docu-drama outlining the contours of this serial killer's crimes with James Bolam in the title role, has been understandably controversial among the relatives of Shipman's victims.

Causing such distress might have seemed less profligate had Shipman come across as something more than a talking book, adding little to newspaper reports of the case. It was neither dramatic enough to make you choke back tears, nor enlightening enough to give any hint of what propelled Shipman to such mass murder. The banality of evil is one thing. But this was maybe just a little too banal.

Daily Express

The unanswered questions were frustrating, but they were also the reason why this undramatic dramatisation was such a cut above. It had its cheesy moments, for example when it laboured to explain the "ghost records" of a computer to viewers unfamiliar with such things.

But it respected victims and viewers alike by sticking to the known facts. If it didn't know, it left it out rather than make it up.