This England review, Culture Whisper
Despite its ongoing effects, the pandemic often feels like an anxiety dream instead of a recent memory. Sky's six-part dramatisation This England makes you relive this collective trauma, with Kenneth Branagh transforming into Boris Johnson. In overwhelming and complicated detail, writer/creators Michael Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke analyse the extent to which Covid blighted Britain.
You're dropped back into the months before those torrid times: starting in April 2019, seeing Johnson's ascension to PM in July, and then the Conservative win at the December general election. Boris delivers a victory speech about 2020 being ‘a year of prosperity, growth and hope'… and then the screen cuts to a colony of Chinese bats, which are subsequently sliced up in a Wuhan street market.
