David Farnor | On 09, Oct 2021

The role of TV, film, literature and art in helping us to process and react to past events and trauma has perhaps rarely been so rawly evident as in the past year. From rolling bulletins and statistics to news reports and documentaries, we are surrounded by harrowing information and data about the Covid-19 pandemic that makes the scale of loss hard to wrap your head around. Help, starring Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham, is a raw, immediate one-off drama, but it gives us just enough distance to be reminded of the human cost of government decisions being paid every day.

The 90-minute drama is set in a care home in 2020, with Comer starring as Sarah, a young newly qualified carer who takes a job at the Liverpudlian residential home. Just as she starts to settle into a rhythm and prove herself up to the task – including fostering a friendship with Tony (Stephen Graham), who has early-onset Alzheimer’s – the outbreak happens, and a patient turns up from the nearby hospital. “We were told we didn’t need them,” the care home staff say, when asked where there masks are, and so begins a battle against a virus that is fought from a back foot already several steps behind.

The lack of funding, support and protective equipment becomes agonisingly clear, and Jack Thorne’s script does a fantastic job of focusing on the consequences rather than the numbers. The cast follow suit, delivering remarkable turns that humanise the horror stories brushed under the carpet and grab our heartstrings from the off. Stephen Graham – who has managed to remain as chameleonic and convincing as he is ubiquitous – is gut-wrenchingly good as Tony, a guy who still speaks of his misspent youth with nostalgic fondness before his memory stumbles into blank patches, leaving him to mood swings that can be unpredictable but are always understandable.

Graham brings humour as well as heartbreaking poignancy, proving the perfect foil for Jodie Comer, who is firing on all cylinders as Sarah, a competent and increasingly confident force of resilience; Comer conveys her growing panic and desperation while burying it just below Sarah’s professional surface. In the background, Ian Hart is wonderfully believable as the boss struggling to work out protocols around visits, feeding routines and social distancing. But this is Comer and Graham’s show, and the connection that builds between them is at the heart of Help’s emotional clout, as they have to team up to help another patient and, at the peak of their abandonment by authorities and systems that are meant to support them, retreat into their own makeshift bubble to keep Tony safe.

Director Marc Munden (Utopia, The Third Day) captures these moments in long takes that immerse us entirely in the fear of the situation. “When did our lives stop being worth the same?” Sarah asks, and might as well be talking directing to the audience. The sting in the title lies in the realisation that, at a time of national crisis, the primary form of help didn’t come from the top down, but came from individuals caring enough to look after each other. This a hugely moving piece of television – and, as you digest and process everything it’s saying, it may well leave you angry as well as hurt.

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