TV review: What does Carrie see in Boris Johnson? The answer isn't obvious in This England
Kenneth Branagh presents a sympathetic - and repugnant - Boris Johnson in This England.
(Sky Atlantic and NOW TV app) begs the question — what does Carrie Symonds see in Boris Johnson?
There must be something because she’s Carrie Johnson now, but the answer isn’t obvious in this six-part dramatisation of Boris’s time in Number 10 Downing Street.
Boris is played, brilliantly, by Kenneth Branagh. He doesn’t appear for a while in episode one, which is frustrating because I was dying to see the transformation. But his invisibility is the point.
The show kicks off with real-life footage of Boris during his rise to the Prime Minister’s job, before cutting to the dramatised version, as Covid makes its way across China and then Europe in early 2020. The reason we don’t see Kenneth/Boris here is because it isn’t that important to him.
So we watch ministers and public health figures discussing the oncoming epidemic, as the ambulances siren their way around northern Italy. Britain is clearly unprepared — but weren’t we all.
The star of the show in the early part of this first episode is Dominic Cummings, the man behind Boris. He’s fun to watch as long as he isn’t your boss, telling a room full of fresh-intake advisors that half of them will be fired on Valentine’s Day, just because. He isn’t bothered by news of a coronavirus, because he is too busy thinking Big Thoughts that will change the world forever.
Kenneth Branagh, when he eventually appears onscreen as Boris, has another problem. He needs to find a way to tell his many children from many marriages that they are getting a new step-sibling because Carrie Symonds is pregnant. The problem is they won’t answer his phone-call invitations to come and join them for dinner. It’s not clear if they’re refusing to answer the phone, or if he’s dialling straight into their voicemail with the invitation, but either way, he looks weak and lonely.
Carrie, is still obviously mad about him, for reasons we might never understand. Branagh gives us a hot-air version of Boris — all thumbs up and jolly quotes from Homer in public, while privately admitting to Carrie that he is struggling with ‘the black dog’, as his hero Winston Churchill called depression. As the rest of Britain scuttles around in preparation for the pandemic, Boris retreats to a country house with Carrie, where they paint watercolours together.
Maybe she feels sorry for him. Branagh’s forced jollity every time he comes into contact with someone outside Boris’s inner circle is touchingly sad. He got the big job, but it didn’t make him happy.
There is a Greek tragedy in every glimpse of Boris. It doesn’t excuse what’s coming, where he wilfully let Covid rip in Britain for a few weeks because he didn’t want to be the bad guy. But Branagh’s portrayal makes it possible to detest Boris and feel like giving him a hug at the same time.
I was a bit annoyed with after a chaotic opening — but by the end of the first episode, Branagh had me on the hook.
