This England
At 9 p.m. on Canal+
«2020 will be a year of prosperity, growth and hope! », proclaims Boris Johnson in December 2019 in front of a white-hot assembly. His party has just won the legislative elections hands down, and the British Prime Minister, determined to implement Brexit, is convinced that the best is yet to come. As we know, he will quickly become disenchanted with the emergence of Covid-19.
Le “god out of the machine” du Brexit
From the first minutes of the series This Englandwhich skilfully interweaves news images and scenes from fiction, Kenneth Branagh’s performance is stunning: facial expressions, postures, intonations… His resemblance to Boris Johnson is all the more disturbing as the dialogues copy the verbal excesses of his model and his mania for quoting Churchill or Shakespeare all the time.
A (too?) ambitious project
In the wake of the hyperactive leader, This England immerses us drum beating in the effervescence of 10 Downing Street, between government machinery on the ground floor and private life upstairs.
With, as a result, very funny scenes, like these brainstormings where political slogans are developed. But the project of director Michael Winterbottom, who signs the screenplay with Kieron Quirke, is more ambitious: beyond political satire, it is a question of offering an overview of the (mis)management of the health crisis. United Kingdom.
Through recurring dives into a London hospital, a retirement home in Southampton or the homes of private individuals whose lives are turned upside down by illness, the series points to the concrete consequences of the inertia of political decisions.
The Time.news, of an almost documentary realism, candidly reveals the disarray of the nursing staff as well as the families, often left to their own devices, faced with the suffering and the mourning of their loved ones. Unfortunately, the multiplication of points of view and characters tends to dilute the narrative tension, and the emotion is sometimes stifled by the hectic pace.