Why does This England let Boris Johnson off so lightly?

No Partygate, no dodgy party donors and no sex pests. If only the Covid wards had been as well sanitised as Michael Winterbottom’s dramatisation of Boris Johnson’s pandemic government, writes Sean O’Grady

The beginning of the end: Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson in ‘This England' (Phil Fisk/Sky)

With an ego as gargantuan as his obviously is, it must be highly flattering to Boris Johnson that no less a figure than Sir Kenneth Branagh was chosen to play him in This England, Sky’s new drama about the now former PM and the Covid crisis. More, still, that considerable time and energy has been spent on turning Branagh into a passable physical replica of Johnson.

A frequent problem in dramatisations such as these (think The Crown, A Very English Scandal, Darkest Hour) is whether the main players should basically be doing impressions of a well-known real-life figure, or rather play them more as they might a fictional figure, say Hamlet or Mr Darcy. In the case of This England, they’ve opted for the impersonations, with some uncanny likenesses. As Matt Hancock, Andrew Buchan reproduces every tiny intonation and mannerism of the hapless former health secretary so unnervingly well that it is as if they’d actually got Hancock on set and applied prosthetics to make him, Hancock, look like Buchan. (Hancock’s love affair is ignored, by the way, which is probably just as well.)  

Johnson should also be delighted – I’m sure he’s vain enough and has enough spare time to tune in – to see that the entire “Partygate” scandal has been omitted. That, after all, was what eventually led to his resignation, and some of the transgressions certainly occurred during the span of this drama – notably the “ambushed by a cake” birthday party in June 2020, for which he received a fixed penalty notice. The drama has no sex pests, no party donors looking for favours, and relatively little bullying. If only the Covid wards were as well sanitised…

Nor are those the only indulgences extended to the now ex-PM. The general impression is of a man who is more incompetent than venal. As the brief joy of “getting Brexit done” (albeit fraudulently) passes, Johnson is a man who gradually falls apart under the pressure of events and the instabilities in the court of infernal personalities he presided over in No 10.  

The impression given is of a man trying valiantly to cope with the role he has coveted all his life while at the same time undergoing various pressures: his wife is having a baby, he’s going through an acrimonious divorce, his children aren’t speaking to him, he has constant money worries, he is attempting to recover from a nasty bout of Covid, and he is surrounded by aggressive nutters. These include chief special adviser Dominic Cummings, head of press Lee Cain, and, in his own small, unhelpful way, Dilyn the dog (another notable lookalike). He quotes Shakespeare, Latin and Greek, and makes witty remarks, of the cynical variety journalists are fond of. He doesn’t seem all bad – just not up to the job.  

So as we see him bumble around Downing Street doing his thumbs-up boosterish schtick – a man clearly out of his depth but not actively malevolent – we are almost invited to feel sorry for the then prime minister. It does, implicitly, feed one of the more favourable Johnson myths: that everything would have been fine if he’d managed to bring his former wife, Marina Wheeler, with him to Downing Street, instead of starting yet another family with a new young partner and thus draining his emotional energies still further.  

Less happily, the drama pre-empts the public inquiry into the UK’s Covid response by dumping blame for its early failures onto Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and, to a much lesser degree, on Cummings and on Johnson himself. Sir Patrick is blamed for persevering with the “herd immunity” approach, tolerating higher casualties, while the Chris Whitty character is treated much more neutrally. It seemed clear at the time that the experts, via their various Sage committees and subcommittees, had formed a consensual view and had adopted informal collective responsibility, along with the ministers who took the decisions. In that context, Sir Patrick seems a bit of a scapegoat. 

Brannagh’s Johnson almost invites pity from viewers (Phil Fisk/Sky)

This England, it turns out, is a sort of dramatic alibi for Johnson’s manifest failings during the first, bewildering wave of Covid. It’s too easy to forget just how terrifying this deadly microorganism was at a time before vaccines, treatments and testing, and how confused the situation was for ministers and experts alike – things the series vividly reminds us of. For many weeks there were no clear answers to any of the questions; but avoidable mistakes were made, and Johnson made them. 

We are shown a prime minister who was distracted, tired, tormented in his sleep, ill-served by a supposedly scheming wife and maverick advisers, and only just escaped death. It’s not exactly a campaign video for his rumoured attempt to make a comeback, but it is an unexpectedly balanced portrait. Unlike the 200,000 or so excess deaths from the coronavirus, and the many more suffering long Covid, Johnson gets off rather lightly here.