Review
This England review – so sympathetic to Boris
Johnson it is absolutely bananas
Kenneth Branagh’s impression of the former
coward-in-chief is spot on, but Michael Winterbottom’s Covid drama is leaden,
artless and a disservice to all those who died
Lucy Mangan
@LucyMangan
Wed 28 Sep 2022 17.25 EDT
The voice
is spot on. That awful moist, blustering sound – a semi-croak, squeezed out of
a tense throat by a man who can never relax because he has no foundations to
rely on – is perfect. Close your eyes and Kenneth Branagh could easily be Boris
Johnson. The face full of prosthetics is less convincing and becomes a
distraction. But that the mask begins to slip the more time you spend in the
man’s company may be the metaphor to end all metaphors. If so, it’s one of the
more successful elements of Michael Winterbottom’s six-part drama This England
(Sky Atlantic), which follows the then prime minister Johnson and his
government through the first wave of the pandemic.
It is
hampered from the off by feeling both too soon and wildly out of date. This
England was in post-production when the Partygate scandal broke and the
decision was taken not to try to revise it at such a late stage, when
presumably only the most superficial changes could have been made. And of
course, Johnson has since been replaced by someone who is shaping up to be –
though it hardly seems possible – even worse, albeit in a less showmanish and
more stunned-halibut way.
The entire
project now has the air of only telling half the story and not telling the
truth. This would undermine any drama based on real-life events, let alone one
that devotes as much time as Winterbottom’s to what feels – to quite deadening
effect – like simple reconstruction. The salient points of Cobra and Sage
meetings, the public daily briefings and the handshaking hospital visit are
shown, and the pros and cons of locking down, contact tracing and mass testing
are laid out for us and Matt Hancock by doctors and scientists via dialogue so
leaden that you wonder if it was really possible for the pandemic to have been
this boring for anyone. Meanwhile, a tally of reported and actual cases scrolls
by on screen as the days pass. There is no art here and it doesn’t work as
documentary either. The factual films that emerged during and after the height
of the pandemic have been without exception more informative and moving than
this.
Partygate
and all the other revelations since make the Dominic Cummings (Simon Paisley
Day) and Barnard Castle debacle, rendered here in exhaustive detail, seem
wrongly weighted. It was, we know now, a bagatelle. And it makes the hugely
sympathetic portrayal of Johnson, as a man pulled in many directions by a new
wife (to be), baby and dog, saddened by a distant relationship with his other
children, a biography on Shakespeare overdue and now – oh what a sea of
troubles! – a pandemic to deal with on top of everything else, which would have
raised eyebrows at the best of times, seem absolutely bananas.
The
characters are merely ciphers, even Johnson. The only suggestion of any kind of
hinterland is his occasional glance out of the window to mutter a quote to
himself instead of to an effortfully appreciative audience. He is nothing more
than the idle, cowardly buffoon we already know him to be. Cummings is no more
than the robotic weirdo whose image you conjure from the times when he was
still allowed to appear in front of cameras. Care home supervisors and members
of the public whose sickening, ventilation and deaths we see are merely
sketched in. This is a disservice.
The message
seems to be: “Well, everyone was trying their best. Tough situaysh, you know?”
Which won’t really do.
It feels as
though it is still too soon for drama. To see such recent, terrible times again
is so gruelling that, although I stand by my criticisms and have tried to
control for the effect, it makes us resistant to engaging with it again.
Yes, we
need to process our individual and collective experiences and art will help us
do that – but the artists have to be ready first. On this evidence, we are all
still in a state of post-traumatic stress, able only to repeat what happened to
us until we can cope with the facts. In time, hopefully, we will be able to
observe the events from different perspectives, combine and recombine them as
stories that aid understanding and dissipate our horrors, allow for questions
and posit some answers. But we are not there yet.
Kenneth Branagh Plays Boris Johnson; Defends
Covid Drama ‘This England’ Slammed By Critics As “Too Soon”
By Caroline
Frost
Caroline
Frost
editor
September
11, 2022 1:25am
Kenneth
Branagh has defended upcoming political drama This England, in which he stars
as British former prime minister Boris Johnson, which many people have slammed
as “too soon.”
The
six-hour series details how the UK government addressed the first chaotic
months of the coronavirus and national lockdown. Critics of the forthcoming
show say it’s too soon to depict such a drama, with its huge death toll leaving
hundreds of thousands of Britons still bereaved and economically vulnerable.
To those,
Branagh says in an interview with The Times, “I think these events are unusual
and part of what we must do is acknowledge them. It might allow people to
process a little of what went on. Any way of understanding it better is
important.”
Oscar
winner Branagh spent two hours every day in makeup, transforming himself into
British former premier Boris Johnson but deliberately chose not to reveal
himself to the cast and crew each day until he had been turned into Johnson, he
told the newspaper.
“When
you’re playing Shakespearean kings, the main part of the performance is given
to you by those who react to you in the way they might to a king. I found that
was the case in this instance. I didn’t really see another actor as myself, so
when I came on the set people responded a bit like their characters might [to
the prime minister].”
Branagh
also revealed he had to actively stretch himself out at the end of each day
after hours of playing the politician, who was beleaguered on the political and
personal front at the time – his first months as the country’s prime minister
and addressing the demands of Covid-19 coinciding with his divorce, and the
imminent birth of his child with girlfriend Carrie Symonds.
“He has a
top-heavy, barrelling physicality heading into the world,” Branagh told The Times,
describing Johnson as a “very hunched-forward kind of guy.”
This
England, like many other British TV series, has had its debut on Sky Atlantic
in the UK delayed by a week after a national period of mourning for the Queen
was declared. It will now be aired on Sky Atlantic and Now early next month.
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