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Michael Winterbottom’s COVID-19 Drama ‘This England,’ With Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson, Flatlines: TV Review
Naman Ramachandran The crisis of leadership Britain has been plunged into over recent years merits sustained study as a cautionary tale. But it demands deeper and sharper analysis than is available in “This England,” a curiously indifferent six-part miniseries notionally centred on former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of the initial coronavirus outbreak, currently limping out on Sky’s U.K. arm. When Winterbottom’s Revolution Films announced the project (originally titled “This Sceptred Isle”) last year – with Kenneth Branagh unveiled as the project’s Johnson – speculation was rife. Would the series be an ensemble satire, along the lines of Winterbottom’s rambunctious “24 Hour Party People”? Or an artfully sober inquiry, in the vein of the director’s Amanda Knox-inspired “The Face of an Angel”? In fact, it’s neither: what we’ve got is a hurriedly assembled primetime procedural that undermines its claim to rigorous accuracy from the off by misspelling the name of Johnson’s soon-to-be-wife Carrie Symonds in its opening credits.
