An emotionally shattering re-examination of Covid

BBC documentary Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On’ lays bare the political failures and human costs of an unprecedented period in UK history, writes Phil Harrison

- Phil Harrison

For those of us lucky enough not to have lost anyone dear, the 12 months between March 2020 and March 2021 now have the quality of a peculiar dream. If we think of the period at all, it’s often in the context of alternating boredom and strangeness; breadmaking and homeschooling; bingeing Tiger King and wondering if 4pm is too early for a glass of wine. Can it possibly have been five years already since Boris Johnson stood at his podium, told us he’d been shaking hands with Covid patients, and, shortly afterwards, announced the first lockdown?

Catey Sexton, the director of BBC One’s affecting – and at times shattering – documentary Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On, is very aware of this. “It feels like we’re in a rush to forget and move on,” she says. But for Sexton and tens of thousands of others, it’s not so easy. She lost her mother during the first Covid wave. Her mother was one of the thousands of people marooned in care homes, behind Matt Hancock’s famed “protective ring”. “All I could do was wave through the window,” Sexton recalls. “Mum couldn’t understand why I was outside”. Later in the film, she expands on her grief. “Mum spent her whole life looking after everyone else”, she says. “So my greatest sadness is that I couldn’t do that for her at the end”.