Help

The worst of all the mistakes of the COVID pandemic was surely the decision, taken in the UK and elsewhere, to discharge sufferers directly from hospital into unprotected care homes. That's the kind interpretation: the worse one is that, either consciously or subconsciously, the powers that be decided to write off the lives of the victims, their new co-residents, and the care workers, in the vain hope that this might isolate the problem. Jack Thorne's excellent drama 'Help' captures what it must have been like to live through this epidemic of death. A strong cast and some telling writing make for harrowing viewing; the care home owner is a particularly interesting role, although the focus is very much on Jodie Comer's and Stephen Graham's characters. What we don't see is the story from the point of view of the most vulnerable themselves; instead, Graham plays a younger man with a different (but less immediately lethal) weakness. But it's powerful stuff, and the best drama I've yet seen about the coronavirus crisis.