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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Jack Seale

Dear England review – Joseph Fiennes’s Gareth Southgate is a total caricature on TV

Joseph Fiennes as Gareth Southgate points at the camera in a scene from Dear England
There’s no need to make him a haunted savant …Joseph Fiennes as Gareth Southgate in the BBC version of James Graham’s play Dear England. Photograph: BBC/PA

At the European Championship in 1996, elegant defender Gareth Southgate volunteered to take a kick in the semi-final penalty shootout against Germany, a task many of his teammates shied away from. He missed. England lost.

Dear England, James Graham’s adaptation of his own hit play, picks up the narrative 20 years later. With England further away than ever from international tournament glory after a string of humiliating failures, Southgate (Joseph Fiennes) steps forward again and is surprisingly hired as manager, largely due to a shortage of viable candidates.

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