STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful
England, March 2020. The World Health Organisation have already warned of a mass outbreak of cases of a new, devastating strain of coronavirus that has spread across Italy, and looks set to arrive on British shores. Dr. Joanne Henderson (Joanne Froggatt) leads a team at a hospital in North London, who find themselves plunged right into the forefront of the enveloping crisis. Forced to isolate from her husband, Nick (Christopher Heatherhall), and son Tommy (Henry Meredith), and with changing guidance from Public Health England, Joanne and her team try to manage, with faulty PPE equipment and decreasing morale.
It's hard to believe that this week, four years have passed since the Covid pandemic broke out and lockdown was imposed after it already had in other countries across Europe. It seems so surreal now, how normal, everyday life suddenly ground to a halt, and everyone was forced to adapt to a new way of life. To be honest, it's surprising that a drama depicting the events that took place has taken as long as it has to be made about it, but now, this succinct three part drama, from seasoned writer Jed Mercurio, co writer Prasanna Puwanarajah, and adapted from the novel by Rachel Clarke, has arrived.
With a limited amount of time to make an impression, we are plunged straight into the heart of the action, without much in the way of development of the central characters, but this inadvertently adds to a sense of realism, as it creates more of a feeling of ordinary, everyday workers, plunged into an horrific, unmanageable nightmare, a group of different personalities working together to try and come out on top. In the lead role, Froggatt is commanding and believable, someone driven by a determination for things to work out. Things really kick in in the third act, when the drama kicks up a notch, and a more dynamic sense kicks into the drama.
If there's a fault to be found, it's maybe in the slightly misjudged title, giving an awe-inducing feel to such a tragic tale, but it's a comparatively trivial gripe, with what is otherwise a sensitively handled drama, a gripping account of one of the great crises of our time, as we stumble into numerous others. ****
England, March 2020. The World Health Organisation have already warned of a mass outbreak of cases of a new, devastating strain of coronavirus that has spread across Italy, and looks set to arrive on British shores. Dr. Joanne Henderson (Joanne Froggatt) leads a team at a hospital in North London, who find themselves plunged right into the forefront of the enveloping crisis. Forced to isolate from her husband, Nick (Christopher Heatherhall), and son Tommy (Henry Meredith), and with changing guidance from Public Health England, Joanne and her team try to manage, with faulty PPE equipment and decreasing morale.
It's hard to believe that this week, four years have passed since the Covid pandemic broke out and lockdown was imposed after it already had in other countries across Europe. It seems so surreal now, how normal, everyday life suddenly ground to a halt, and everyone was forced to adapt to a new way of life. To be honest, it's surprising that a drama depicting the events that took place has taken as long as it has to be made about it, but now, this succinct three part drama, from seasoned writer Jed Mercurio, co writer Prasanna Puwanarajah, and adapted from the novel by Rachel Clarke, has arrived.
With a limited amount of time to make an impression, we are plunged straight into the heart of the action, without much in the way of development of the central characters, but this inadvertently adds to a sense of realism, as it creates more of a feeling of ordinary, everyday workers, plunged into an horrific, unmanageable nightmare, a group of different personalities working together to try and come out on top. In the lead role, Froggatt is commanding and believable, someone driven by a determination for things to work out. Things really kick in in the third act, when the drama kicks up a notch, and a more dynamic sense kicks into the drama.
If there's a fault to be found, it's maybe in the slightly misjudged title, giving an awe-inducing feel to such a tragic tale, but it's a comparatively trivial gripe, with what is otherwise a sensitively handled drama, a gripping account of one of the great crises of our time, as we stumble into numerous others. ****