This England

Branagh as Johnson is fantastic, after 15 minutes in you forget you are not watching the real Boris. The pace and style of the series reminds me of 2011's Contagion. The music and sound design leaves me with a continuous feeling of tension hanging in the air. The hospital scenes looks authentic, you can clearly see how misled and thus desperate the medical personnel is at times. The whole series takes you back to those days back in February and March 2020 when the whole world came to a standstill. And when noone knew when, or if this pandemic will ever be over again. A must-watch with great acting!

A look at The UK Government's handling of The Covid 19 pandemic, from the point of view of then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

If it were a totally fiction based drama, it would have been quite amusing at times, with Boris shown as a somewhat jovial figure, however, as we all know this was based on actual, real life events, and here you get to see some of the suffering.

One thing that was well portrayed, was how utterly Clueless The Government were, unprepared, incompetent and slow to react, I defy anyone to say they handled the situation well. What worries me, is that during the current financial crisis, lots of these people are there, it's a sobering thought. It was an impossible situation, but one that overwhelmed and consumed those that were responsible for the day to day running of the country.

This was a truly well made and well acted drama, I subscribed to the service, for one reason only, I wanted to see Kenneth Branagh playing Boris Johnson, and he did so quite brilliantly, he is one awesome actor, and as always he nailed it. Lots of strong performances, I look forward to seeing more of Simon Paisley Day, hopefully we'll get to see day trips to Durham.

Very good, thought provoking drama, 8/10.

I was really looking forward to this, but my only criticism is that it didn't really know what it was trying to do.

It's a tough job to cover everything that happened because there was simply too much going on to fit into the time allowed, but no mention of Track&Trace and the PPE scandals was very odd to say the least.

Some judicious editing would have made this more engaging because we don't learn much from continually watching people walking around and saying hello to their colleagues.

All the bits about the dog (Dylan) should never have made it to the final cut.

6/10 because it's above average but nowhere near as insightful as it could have been.

This England is an excellent dramatic series, perhaps too close, that portrays a very difficult period of time not only for England but for the whole world, in which some governments were incompetent, they did not know how to face the pandemic.

Being honest I have to admit that I watched the series to see Kenneth Branagh work, it's fascinating how he gets the voice, the gestures, the physicality, he becomes Boris, but what makes his performance perfect is that he doesn't judge the character, he doesn't ridicules not condemns him, Branagh shows Boris for the viewer to judge. The rest of the cast and crew also do a great job. It's worth the time, sometimes a little hard to watch but it's important not to forget what happened and where everyone was.

If you've loved the portrayal of The Royals in 'The Crown' they you'll like this time capsule based on the rise and fall of the Conservative government from mid 2019 through 20/21 with the highs of Brexit and successfully leaving it 2020 but the onslaught of the dreaded 'COVID' its all very gripping as we all lived through it in real time and losing family to it so equally hard to see it unravel in a drama but then this based on life experiences of key events.

Kenneth Branagh as the infamous 'Boris Johnson' not only puts in a brilliant performance from his gravely voice and waddle but looks exactly like him with his doting wife and look alike Carrie.. From Rishi to Hancock, all putting in a great performance, brilliant!