“I Hope Boris Is Flattered”: Michael Winterbottom On Casting Kenneth Branagh As The British P.M. In Sky’s COVID Drama ‘This England’

deadline.com:

When it was announced that Michael Winterbottom would be making a series about the first pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2022, many assumed—or perhaps hoped—that the politically committed director would be holding the British government to account.

However, speaking to Deadline at the 38th Sarajevo Film Festival, 25 years after his acclaimed war drama Welcome To Sarajevo screened there, Winterbottom revealed that, in common with many of his fictionalized but factual feature films, the six-part Sky series This England , which debuts 21 September, will be an ensemble piece, taking a bird’s-eye view of the British authorities’ initial response to COVID.“Boris is just one strand that runs through it,” he said, “because it’s really a mosaic of lots of different stories.

The most enjoyable part was the research, really, because we started it straight after the first wave, in June 2020. We got to talk to lots of scientists, people working at SAGE [The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies], lots of doctors, nurses, care-home workers—and people, obviously, that had COVID.

So it’s a collage of all their stories interwoven into … a diary almost. It’s really a diary, or chronicle, or calendar of the first wave, so it finishes at the end of May 2020.”Although plenty of news stories emerged from the pandemic, notably the notorious “Partygate” scandal involving illegal lockdown gatherings at Johnson’s 10 Downing Street home, Winterbottom insists that the focus is on the broader picture. “We’re just trying to chronicle what happened,” he said, “and my assumption is, and I think it’s true, that everyone was trying to do their best.