Dear England review – Joseph Fiennes’s Gareth Southgate is a total caricature on TV

This television transfer of the hit play has a great cast and impressive footballing scenes. But the manager feels like a cross between Harold Steptoe and Captain Darling from Blackadder Goes Forth At the European Championship in 1996, elegant defender Gareth Southgate volunteered to take a kick in the semi-final penalty shootout against Germany, a task many of his teammates shied away from. He missed. England lost. Dear England, James Graham’s adaptation of his own hit play, picks up the narrative 20 years later. With England further away than ever from international tournament glory after a string of humiliating failures, Southgate (Joseph Fiennes) steps forward again and is surprisingly hired as manager, largely due to a shortage of viable candidates. Little is expected of him but, once in place, he instigates a quiet revolution, bringing in psychologist Pippa Grange (Jodie Whittaker) to help turn the squad from disaffected mercenaries into a band of brothers who protect each other’s mental wellbeing and reclaim what it means to wear the England shirt. At the 2018 World Cup, they go on a thrilling run to the semi-final, winning a penalty shootout along the way. The public’