 The depiction of Alec Jeffreys as the stereotypical absent-minded "boffin" was cited by several reviewers.Gerard O'Donovan in "The Daily Telegraph" called the show's version of him a "stock obsessive boffin so wedded to his lab instruments that his marriage was permanently on the brink of collapse".Julia Raeside in "The Guardian" wrote, "There are obligatory scenes in which Jeffreys misses a school play and receives a phone call from his wife pronouncing, 'Your dinner’s in the dog.'