It's not my department, love. No, it never is.

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#28 : Help

Another one-off Covid drama, Help starred Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham as a care home worker and resident respectively. Jack Thorne’s script surged with rage at the indifference with which the care sector was left to rot as the first wave of the pandemic rolled in. There’s plenty of warmth, but you’re never allowed to forget who the villains are.

Going from Get Back to Help, we continue with two fine Liverpudlians who can often be found acting in other accents, but for once they're on home ground.  I'd have to say that my expectations were pretty high here - as well as the names mentioned above, we also have Lesley Sharp, Sue Johnstone and Cathy Tyson involved who are hardly slouches at this acting thing.  I'm also expecting it to be somewhat depressing and to make me really quite angry indeed.

And we basically spent the time with Sarah (Jodie) who gets a job in a care home, where one of the residents is Tony (Stephen) who's suffering from early onset Alzheimers.  As the pandemic hits, patients are moved out of the hospitals into the care home - and you can probably imagine how well that works out.

God, what a nightmare it must have been in so many care homes across the land.  In this case (and it's all too believable) Sarah is stuck there as the sole member of staff with the patients dropping around her and no support being provided by anyone - which means that she has to call on Tony, putting him at risk.  The choice of an early onset Alzheimers patient works really well because even though we are watching it with hindsight, his confusion helps us remember how little anyone knew back in the day.

I wasn't 100% convinced by the last 20 minutes or so - it takes a bit of a flight of fancy which, for me, isn't that believable and detracts from the powerful work done before, although the ending is properly heartbreaking and features a strong "Fuck The Tories" speech to camera.  I also felt her family were written as unnecessarily unsupportive - it all felt a bit jarring and didn't obviously add anything.  But I'm quibbling really - all in all, it's a powerful watch fuelled by righteous anger.

So - what's the acting like?  Yeah, it's OK I guess - not bad for a couple of scallies.  It's really Jodie and Stephen's film and they deliver as you'd expect them to.  It's the third time we've seen Stephen on the lists this year (here and here) so he had a pretty good 2021 all in all - although Jodie was the one who won the Bafta for this (she's got 2 from 3 nominations, whereas Stephen has 0 from 8, which feels harsh).  All the other actors do a fine job, but apart from Ian Hart as Steve (who is a curiously unevenly written character) they don't appear too often - although I'm going to mention Cathy Tyson just for the way she read out a poem.

It's well filmed as well - there's excellent use of lighting and camerawork which makes us feel at times that Sarah (and others) are lost in a maze, which I guess she is on many levels.  The camerawork is also impressive given that the whole thing was filmed under Covid restrictions, which can't have made things any easier.

And finally, a cool fact from Wikipedia for those of you that have seen it (or are moved to watch it) - the section where she's in the care home as the only staff member was filmed as a single take (and they made them do it twice).  Which I didn't notice, which manages to make it both impressive and pointless - if you're going to do something clever, then you want it to be noticed!

Overall, this is a very fine piece of work that has much to say - in a lot of ways it's similar in tone to Time, Stephen's previous entry on the list.  I thoroughly "enjoyed" it (it's not exactly an enjoyable watch) and recommend it, with the proviso that I have been fortunate enough not to lose anyone to Covid.  I can imagine that if you have, particularly from a care home, then this might just be a bit too much for you but conversely, it may give you some reassurance that, across the care home and many other industries, there were plenty of people out that cared and really did their best for others.  Approach with care based upon your experiences, I guess - which is always a good mantra to live by.

#27 - The most fascinatingly boring telly
#29 - I really liked this