The Sky Atlantic series This England, in which Kenneth Branagh plays former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has received mixed reviews.
Based on actual incidents, testimony, and archival material, the six-part docudrama series tells the story of Johnson’s time in the position.
It focuses on the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, his hospitalization following exposure to the virus, and the birth of his son.
It was “a grueling watch, but a mesmerizing one,” according to The Times.
In Michael Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke’s series, The Telegraph claimed that Kenneth Branagh “fails to get under Boris’s skin,” while The Guardian referred to This England as “TV at its most upsetting.”
Anita Singh, a writer for the Telegraph, gave the “dud” drama only two stars, claiming that Branagh’s “poor wig and prosthetics dominate what could have been a serious drama about the pandemic and lockdown”
“This is a story of deaths in care homes, inadequate PPE, and family members being forced to say farewell to their loved ones on the deathbed over FaceTime,” she said.
The issue is that other dramas have done a far better job of telling this tale. For example, consider Jack Thorne’s excellent Help, in which Jodie Comer plays a caregiver.
“Here, the action switches back to Whitehall every few minutes, where an actor [Andrew Buchan] is attempting to impersonate [former Health Secretary] Matt Hancock, undercutting the pathos of previous sequences,” the author writes.
She referred to Johnson’s portrayal as a “live, breathing Spitting Image.”
“Too beautifully realistic,”
But Carol Midgley, writing in the Times, gave the production four stars and said it was “brilliantly realistic.” She said, “Too wonderfully realistic,” stating that after one particularly “excruciating” death scene, she had to turn it off.
Michael Winterbottom, she wrote, “does a masterful job entwining the parallel narratives of Covid approaching like a bullet train and Johnson distracted by his domestic dramas: his divorce, his pregnant girlfriend, Carrie, his grown children ignoring his voicemails, and his asking 10 Downing Street staff to ‘do the honors’ and pick up Dilyn the dog’s poo.”
Given the breakneck pace at which events are covered and the way that real footage is mixed into the drama, “If This England were a cartoon character, it would be Road Runner.”
However, it seems that both journalists thought Johnson’s Covid-induced dream scene with his family was a big mistake.
Ophelia Lovibond portrays Johnson’s wife Carrie Symonds on the program, and Simon Paisley Day plays his contentious chief advisor Dominic Cummings.
According to Hollie Richardson of The Guardian, Branagh was “sickeningly accurate as Boris Johnson,” evidenced by his frequent use of Shakespearean quotations.
The breakout of a “mystery Sars-like virus” in China begins in early 2020, when Brexit, floods, a government change, and writing a book on Shakespeare diverted Johnson’s attention.
This program may have been created too soon, but it’s possible that its whole purpose is to be uncomfortable.
Branagh was “utterly convincing” as Johnson, although the series had “very disturbing scenes and fails as a drama when those events are still unfolding,” according to BBC Culture’s three-star assessment, which tended to support this opinion.
The first draft of history is considered to be provided by journalism, according to Neil Armstrong. “Now, it seems, a prominent six-part drama is hot on the heels of journalism.”
Dramatic tragedy’s hero
According to the Financial Times, the show manages to make the floundering former prime minister into a tragic theatrical hero while pulling off the “rare trick of feeling both premature and antiquated.”
In his three-star review, Dan Einav stated, “for many viewers, viewing a dramatization of the epidemic while the realities of disease, loss, and lockdown remain raw would seem like a meaningless or masochistic endeavor.” The plot is condensed for viewers who are taken in by the Sky mini-series emphasis on the events in Number 10.
The series, he pointed out, “culminates not with Partygate (which brought Boris Johnson’s political collapse), but with Dominic Cummings’ ophthalmological excursions to Barnard Castle,” because production on it started so early in the pandemic.
He continued, “While This England may not be essential, it does provide more than a summary of the early Covid period. A character study of Johnson that is unusual, intriguing, and speculative is combined with an account of the government’s reactive, inadequate, and frequently irresponsible handling of the situation. The book is billed as “fiction based on real events.”
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