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Stephen Graham had been asking screenwriter Jack Thorne to write a script for him and his friend and fellow Liverpudlian actor Jodie Comer and it took a pandemic for a project to finally come together. 

Comer stars as Sarah who begins to finally believe she might have found her calling when he takes a job at a care home. She gets on well with the residents, especially Tony (Graham) who has early-onset Alzheimer's. As 2020 begins though the coronovirus pandemic looms and Sarah finds herself dealing with things she couldn't even have imagined. 

The centre piece of the episode is a twenty-minute continuous take as Sarah finds herself as the only member of staff in the care home on the night shift and realises one of the residents is seriously ill with Covid. She attempts to get help but no services are answering other than 999 and even they don't have any ambulances to send. It's a really harrowing scene, the effectiveness of which is really enhanced by Comer in what I think might be a career-best performance to date, which is really saying something. 

Unfortunately I felt the film was let down by it's final section. For around three quarters of the runtime it felt like it was really striving for gritty realism and then it spins-off in an unconvincing direction which felt like it belonged to another drama entirely and had little to do with COVID. It did at least lead to a final monologue from Jodie Comer which is brilliantly performed and devastating. 

I've never seen something made for British TV which is so openly critical of the government. For most of the runtime it doesn't really critique as such but it shows the lack of support care homes received. I felt that it did an excellent job at focusing on the widely-reported issues around care homes in the pandemic in a focused way without needed to resort to huge fictionalisations. The closing monologue contains a direct criticism of the government which is hugely powerful and then some statistics from provided by government offices themselves which highlights just how poorly they managed care homes during the height of COVID. It's hard to imagine anyone watching this and not being horrified by the government's treatment of care homes no matter what their political views. This felt to me that it was powerful enough that it could actually become the catalyst for change- it's unquestionably clear that social care in the UK needs reformed and with an aging population the problems are only going to get worse if reform doesn't come. 

Harrowing without being grim with the magnificent Jodie Comer never being better, it's just a shame it's let down a little by the final quarter.