Streaming on: Sky Atlantic / NOW###Episodes viewed: 3 of 5###When Michael Winterbottom began shooting this drama with regards to’concerning’with respect to Boris Johnson’s premiership and the Covid pandemic, both still held the nation in their grapple . He had no idea that bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e release the UK would possess’own’nurse learned to live with one but decided it could no longer abide the other. That’s part of the problem with this handsomely made, superbly acted drama: it’s telling the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous gest story of the century without abundant’ample’plentiful distance to offer much new context. It’s a well-manufacture d re-enactment of things you probably already know and may not be keen to relive just yet.###There are two distinct halves to This England. One is an account of how the pandemic took hold of the world with terrifying speed. Real archive footage and all-too-realistic dramatisations reveal’illustrate’demonstrate’indicate’present’display’argue NHS staff struggling to fight an illness that refuses to follow any established rules, and individual dying while the question is debated of whether this could be really serious. It’s all intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully respectfully done, despite’in spite of’albeit something feels off with regards to’concerning’with respect to scratching at wounds that in/with regard to’concerning’regarding many individual are still healing.###As Johnson, Kenneth Branagh has nailed the mannerisms, aldespite’in spite of’albeit heavy prosthetics sometimes make him look oddly like he’s wearing a Halloween mask.###Alongside that is the juicy semi-fictional stuff, a look behind the scenes at the government’s calamitous reaction to the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous gest health crisis in a century. Triumphantly winning a landslide election in December 2019, Boris Johnson fairly quickly has to contend with leading the country through a pandemic. It’s a portrait of a man who lives to be loved, learning what it means to actually be the most significant’essential’critical’vital’crucial’indispensable’imperative man in the country. As Johnson, Kenneth Branagh has nailed the mannerisms – the shoulders-back stride as if marching into a stiff breeze; the rollercoaster up-and-down of his sentences – aldespite’in spite of’albeit heavy prosthetics sometimes make him look oddly like he’s wearing a Halloween mask. Even beneath the make-up, he conveys the cracks appearing in Johnson’s assurance well — a man who can’t cope with giving individual wicked’dreadful’undesirable’adverse’vile news, whether it’s the nation or his own family.###Though fictionalised, it’s believable that these scenes happened and the great cast convince as all too well-known faces — yet it ultimately feels like merely’barely part of a story. Stopping well bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e Partygate and Johnson’s retoken ation, This England is a portrait unfinished.