TV & Radio

You’ve had lockdown fatigue. Now comes lockdown-documentary fatigue

Pandemic 2020 review: We’ve all endured a lot. Few have endured as much as these people

The epic story of people around the world living through the first year of the pandemic

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Ed Power
Thu Apr 1 2021 - 22:00

Is it too soon? That is the question whenever a new documentary comes along claiming to bring us the unvarnished truth about the year we’ve just endured. Lockdown fatigue is absolutely a thing. But what about documentaries-about-lockdown fatigue?

Pandemic 2020 (BBC Two Thursday) is different in that takes a global perspective. In a riveting first episode it also coaxes hugely emotive interviews from its subjects. We’ve all been through a lot. But some of these people truly been at the sharp end of history. And they have the emotional scars to show for it.

We begin – where else ? – in Wuhan in early 2020. Xie, a young food blogger, recalls the eeriness as the city was suddenly shut-down. She and her boyfriend live-streamed their daily walks through the deserted megapolis, which they intend to hold on to as a keepsake for their children.

Those kids will be glad to have missed out on Wuhan becoming a ghost town of ten million. In Coventry, meanwhile, doctor Amie cries as she remembers her first Covid patient. One minute they were healthy, the next fighting for life. She had told them everything was going to be alright – and it had been a “lie”, she says.

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“Nobody should have to die alone – no one,” Amie continues. “That is not dignified. That is not humane. That is what was happening every single day. You’ve got incredible people, who have lived incredible lives. And then they pass away and they’ve got me there. It’s a bloody cruel disease.”

A virus making its way from central China to the ends of the earth can be hard to wrap one's head around. In remote north-west Iceland, Árný recalls, with raw shock, how Covid claimed her mother.

"This is completely unbelievable," she says. "That a virus travels all the way from somewhere in China to the Westfjords and into the nursing home where my mother lives."

Pandemics always end. And Covid will pass. But there is a glimpse of what will be left when the floodwaters abate in the musings of Vladimir, who works in the Mayor's office in Bogota. With its ailing health service, Colombia sensibly went into an early lockdown so as to prevent hospitals becoming immediately overwhelmed.

This left tens of thousands of poor people unable to provide for their families. The state did its best with food drops. However, dissent was soon breaking out on the streets. It is unclear where the turmoil will lead. Welcome to a New Normal without end.

“After Covid,” says Vladimir, “this country is not going to be the same”. He was speaking about Colombia. He might have been talking about the whole world.

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