This England, a six-part drama about Boris Johnson and his government’s response to the pandemic, was released on Sky last week.
The drama, which stars Kenneth Branagh as the Prime Minister, Ophelia Lovibond as Carrie Symonds and Andrew Buchan as Matt Hancock, focuses on the six months following the emergence of Covid.
“Is it too soon to pick at the existential scab of the past 30 months? Quite the opposite. The first few minutes of episode one recap an awful lot of stuff we’re in danger of forgetting,” said The Standard.
Now, in a new featurette shared by Sky, Branagh, Buchan, Lovibond, Derek Barr (who plays communications chief Lee Cain) and director Michael Winterbottom speak about the making of the drama.
“From the start, the idea was that the pandemic was something that had happened incredibly quickly, that had moved incredibly swiftly,” says Winterbottom.
The director then explains how the show’s team started creating This England by contacting people who worked in Downing Street, at SAGE and in the Department of Health, then doctors and nurses, people in care homes and people who had family members who had experienced Covid – so that they could build a fuller picture of the way the virus affected different groups of people around the country.
“Working on the show reminded me of the pace of events, the sense of being overwhelmed a lot of the time,” says Branagh.
“The story reminds us of the whirlwind into which we were placed, the way in which it produced this very palpable national vulnerability. The sounds and the sights of our world were entirely changed... There was an existential earthquake attached to this experience,” he adds.
The featurette intercuts interviews with shots from This England, with the screen flashing from nursing homes to Downing Street and then to hospitals, as news-reader-style voice-overs talk about the spread of the virus. “Although it’s only two years ago, it’s quite easy to forget how new and fresh everything was at the time,” says Winterbottom.
“It’s this beast that they had no control over,” says Buchan. “So they didn’t have this formulaic response to it that I suppose they normally would have in government. So the team at the helm of this project just wanted it to be as real as humanly possible.”
The show began filming in January 2021, just as England went into a second lockdown. This created “huge logistical challenges”, particularly as the crew was trying to gain access to hospitals and care homes.
As the featurette ends Branagh says, “I think the intention of the programme is to acknowledge this extraordinary time of the lives of these islands, with respect, and with compassion and with rigour.”
This England has divided the critics. The Standard’s reviewer Nick Curtis said, “This is splendid television, history distilled on screen. Watch it and weep,” giving the show five stars, while the Guardian said, “Michael Winterbottom’s Covid drama is leaden, artless and a disservice to all those who died.”
