Nicholas Hoult

Wossy's production team have really come up with the goods tonight, netting five sparkling guests who, between them, should please almost every part of the audience. Top of the bill is Danny Boyle, whose direction of the Olympics opening ceremony last summer propelled him from well-regarded filmmaker to cut-and-dried national treasure overnight. He'll be talking about that experience, as well as his latest movie, Trance, and his recently revealed plans to make a sequel to Trainspotting within the next few years. Fans of the director should savour the moment, as Boyle hardly ever gives TV interviews.

Following him, Deadwood star Ian McShane and Skins alumnus Nicholas Hoult drop in to discuss their new film, Jack the Giant Slayer (not a remake of the 1962 film, but basically Jack and the Beanstalk reworked with Hollywood levels of blood, guts and brouhaha).

Last but not least, Blur frontman Damon Albarn and 69-year-old soul hero Bobby Womack are on hand with live music from The Bravest Man in the Universe - the wonderful, strikingly poignant album they made together last year.

Pete Naughton, The Telegraph, 22nd March 2013

Martin Paul Kenny Dalglish Moone is the most life-affirming delight to have hit our screens in a long time. Played with gap-toothed genius by young David Rawle - actually he doesn't have a gap-tooth but the charm of the writing somehow makes you think he does - he's the amalgam of every well-intentioned, bright, troubled 12-year-old you might have been lucky enough to meet, and somehow manages to span every shade of the above category, from Thomas Turgoose's darker character in the Shane Meadows things, via every Roddy Doyle 12-year-old, ever, to Nicholas Hoult's Marcus in the more glucose-rich About a Boy.

Which is possibly to imbue Rawle's success with heavier pretensions than the writing would ever affect: Moone Boy is, essentially, a piece of fun. But what fun. Written by Chris O'Dowd and Nick Vincent Murphy, it's the tale of Martin Moone growing up in Boyle, County Roscommon, in the teeth of 1989 - we're told this by the scrolling title in the first scene, along with the nugget: "Chance of rain, weirdly low." So far, in Boyle, so Doyle, and this is not so much of a bad thing, as Martin copes with bullies, his mother's feminism, his sister's bras, broccoli boiled until it turns white, and the like, though it has (so far) stopped short of a horse in a lift. Where this is lifted superbly is in the appearance of Martin's thirtysomething be-beanied "imaginary friend", played by O'Dowd, who appears as a one-man Greek chorus, with banjo, to offer Martin the worst advice imaginable at every turn; and the occasional animations as we are taken inside Martin's head and reminded of the vaulting imagination you're stuck with by virtue of being 12 and clever.

It is surreal, within decent limits, and it is derivative, but I think the derivations are happily if tacitly acknowledged; musically, certainly so, as we get stings from Grange Hill, Mission: Impossible, Raindrops Keep Fallin', etc. There are grand twists, such as the disenfranchised, underemployed menfolk - including Martin's lovely dad Liam and the bullying twins' father - meeting up for ostensible poker schools or fishing trips (none of them own fishing rods, or even a pack of cards) but instead to drink and moan, with their damp-eyed remnants of manliness, about the impossibility of all their children. If the opening two episodes, also featuring a forgivably OTT cameo from Steve Coogan, are representative, there's a granite-solid winner here, sculpted with charm, knowingness and a canny ability to lift from tradition while delivering fresh unpredicatability at every turn. Sky has been waiting for a return on its huge investments in new comedy; and of course Ireland has been waiting too long for anything to even approach Father Ted: early days, but I think that if these are boxes which needed ticking, and the boxes could somehow be painted glass panels awaiting some pebbles from a cheeky 12-year-old, then what we're hearing here is the happy sound of breaking glass.

Euan Ferguson, The Observer, 16th September 2012

Hugh Grant is impossibly perfect casting as an eternal bachelor boy in this Oscar-nominated adaptation of Nick Hornby's unusual coming-of-age comedy-drama. He's Will, a happily superficial chap whose inherited wealth (from his dad's Christmas novelty pop single) means he never needs to work again. Will is disconnected from the world until a chance encounter with a depressed single mum (Toni Collette) and her precocious son Marcus, played by a pre-hottie, pudding-bowled Nicholas Hoult.

Sharon Lougher and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro, 23rd August 2012