The show will air on Sky next year
Acclaimed actor and director Kenneth Branagh is set to play Boris Johnson in a new TV drama about the coronavirus pandemic.
Branagh will star in This Sceptred Isle, a five-part drama about the beginning of the Covid crisis. It will be directed and co-written by the prolific Michael Winterbottom, whose previous work includes 24 Hour Party People and The Trip series.
The drama is set to start filming soon, and will air on Sky in autumn 2022.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series “will trace the impact on Britain from this once-in-a-generation pandemic, and the response of scientists, nurses, and doctors as they worked tirelessly and heroically to contain and overcome the virus”.
The script will be based on first-hand testimony from those involved at all levels, from politicians and policy-makers to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), and front-like workers like doctors, nurses and care-workers.
This will not be the first time Boris Johnson has been portrayed on-screen. In the 2009 More4 drama-documentary When Boris Met Dave, Johnson was played by Christian Brassington. He was also played by Richard Goulding in Brexit: The Uncivil War, the 2019 Channel 4/HBO film starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings.
Kenneth Branagh is one of Britain’s most celebrated actors, having won three BAFTAs and two Emmy Awards. He has also been nominated for five Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.
He is probably best known for starring in and directing multiple screen adaptations of Shakespeare, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), and As You Like It (2006).
He directed and starred as legendary detective Hercule Poirot in the recent all-star adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, and its upcoming sequel Death on the Nile.
Most recently he played the bad guy in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, having previously worked with Nolan in Dunkirk.
