Only one thing really lets down Michael Winterbottom’s methodically damning six-part drama about the government’s response to the Covid crisis: Boris Johnson’s face. Kenneth Branagh perfectly captures the voice and the body language of the then-PM, and convincingly portrays him as lazy, entitled and almost childishly unfit for the role he coveted for so long.
The facial prosthetics are distractingly awful, though, resembling the pallid mask worn by killer Michael Myers in the Halloween films. Johnson’s left eye in particular looks like it’s melting. Then again, perhaps my own vision was affected by the red mist that descended as I watched the first three episodes. The litany of arrogance, incompetence and callousness that Winterbottom, his co-writer Kieron Quirke and co-director Julian Jarrold remind us of stokes a powerful feeling of rage.
