Care home deaths, Barnard Castle, cover-ups – the story of the PM’s handling of the Covid outbreak is ripe for drama. But is Michael Winterbottom’s tale just too sympathetic?
On the day in June 2020 when Michael Winterbottom started researching This England, 67 people died of Covid. It feels like an astonishingly small number now. This was before we had a vaccine or even mass testing; before we had test and trace or any clue how much money had been wasted; before we knew about the dodgy contracts, the Downing Street parties, the devastation in care homes. It’s hard to say what’s sadder about this six-part drama: the memory of how ominous those months were, the sense of marching towards a staggering death toll, or the realisation of how deluded we were back then about the true scale of how many lives would be lost.
The period This England covers is quite tight, just that first wave. In retrospect, of course, that was the most dramatic time. We’d never seen a pandemic before. We’d never heard birdsong so loudly or missed our friends en masse. We’d never tried to process how large a number 1,000 is when attached to deaths in a day. We didn’t have a clue. As later events – worse surprises, fresh lockdowns – piled up, it was like building a carapace of cynicism. But those early days were defined by ignorance and innocence. “I felt it important to underline that this was a new virus,” says Winterbottom. “One of the main things we wanted to capture was how quickly people had to respond to this ever-moving target.”
