'HELP' STARRING JODIE COMER & STEPHEN GRAHAM

                                               

Channel 4 returns with another powerful piece of television.

New drama ‘Help’ centres itself around the Coronavirus pandemic in its height as it first emerged in 2020. The two hour long drama is set in a fictional care home in Liverpool in the spring, and follows a carer (Jodie Comer) as she bonds with a patient (Stephen Graham), as the pandemic hits she is put to the test in horrific circumstances.

This vital one off television creation shares insight into the impact Coronavirus had on care homes during its initial onset and looks at the undervalued care workers whose job was to keep the patients going. Its necessity comes with its strength at shining a light on the hard work and voices of those that continued to work and care during such a difficult and uncertain time, recognising how important the work is that these carers do and raising awareness around that.

Such a harrowing topic is often difficult to watch, but equally enlightening to really delve into the challenges and intensity they had to face. The acting is phenomenal, particularly from actors Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham who continue to deliver detailed and faultless performances in every role they play.

It follows Jodie Comer in the role of young carer Sarah. Coronavirus has not yet reached the UK, and she has just applied for a new job in a fictional Liverpool care home. She is displayed as a little rough around the edges, the show pushes the message that the kind of skills you need to be a good care worker are personal, emotional and physical, not necessarily the kind of things you learn in the classroom. Stephen Graham plays a resident in the care home, a young man with young onset Alzheimer’s. Being set in Liverpool, both actors are speaking with their native accents.

 

Graham said, "It takes a special kind of human being to be a carer, I've had children, had to change my children, wash and bathe them, that's one thing. But to do that for an older person, someone who's coming maybe towards the end of their life, you're trying to make their days as comfortable as can be. For someone to do that day in, day out, and not just the practical but the humane aspect - maybe you're the only person George and Janet see all day. You're their source of the outside world, their communication. And this is what's so beautiful about our story, we see Sarah come alive. Maybe she wasn't the most gifted academically, maybe she wasn't going to change the world with her brain, but she's changing somebody's life." It’s this that makes this drama such an honest and moving watch.

Written by Jack Thorne, the first part of the film follows Sarah adapting to her new job, as she does she develops a particular connection with Tony (Stephen Graham). There’s only a few references to Covid at this stage, but then things start to quickly change and progress. Multiple residents catch the virus and there is a shortage of staff as many of Sarah's colleagues have to self-isolate.

 

There is an incredible sequence where Sarah is left working by herself on a night shift. She works solidly for 20 hours, with no other staff around, struggling to cope as one Covid-ravaged resident finds it increasingly difficult to breathe. This scene was filmed in an unbroken, 25-minute single take. The camera follows her as the nightmare unfolds around her.

 

Jodie Comer said, "I think that big sequence was probably the most difficult for us all.” "And Marc Munden, (the director) really pushed me on that, I remember there was a moment, we'd done this whole take and I was so in my own head and I was like, 'I think we've got it,' and Marc was like, 'No, we're going to do one more,' and I was like, 'Uhh, okay.' And we did it again, and the moments we got in that second take we never would have got in the first. And I think Marc was phenomenal at that, knowing when to push you that little bit more. That was probably the most difficult for all of us, because we had to huddle together and act as a team."

 

Writer Jack Thorne said he felt passionately that the programme should stick up for care workers, "There were carers who felt responsible for the crisis, and that was the bit that felt unforgiveable for me," he says. "Carers are massively undervalued, and they were massively undervalued during the pandemic."

 

Director Marc Munden adds: "We were talking to people who hadn't had time to grieve, and they felt responsible, but they also felt they'd been betrayed, and that was really upsetting. Because it hadn't stopped by the time we'd started the research. I do feel the government completely betrayed the care sector compared with the NHS."

 

Jack Thorne adds, “Hearing the stories of those at the frontline, having people break down in tears on zoom in front of us has been incredibly moving and galling. Getting the story right will be incredibly important, we are aware of the pressure upon us, this has to be written and made with anger and precision. We hope we do it justice.”

 

And they certainly do in my opinion, another moving yet sensitive piece that I recommend viewing.