Pandemic 2020

As the news of Covid-19 broke, no one knew what to expect. Shot in 21 countries, Pandemic 2020 tells personal stories from the extraordinary first year of the virus that is still changing our world.

The series starts on New Year’s Eve 2019, when huge crowds gathered to celebrate around the world. Told through candid interviews and powerful archive footage, the series charts what happened as the virus spreads around the planet. Throughout the year we see the impact on varied communities as those in power take different approaches to fighting the virus.

Among an extraordinary and varied cast are a French photojournalist who, forced to decide between working and homeschooling, heads to the frontline of the pandemic; Xie is a young food blogger from Wuhan whose wedding took place just a few days before her city went into lockdown; a family in Kenya suffering the unjust killing of heir son during lockdown; Tanya, a working mother of 6 living in a high rise flat in the Bronx who finds herself in the thick of things in the Black Lives Matter protests; a filmmaker in the economically crippled city of Beirut who has to deal first with Covid-19 and then the devastating port explosion; and Ivan, a celebrated Russian ballet dancer, who faces a new reality when the Bolshoi Ballet closes.

The three-part series first aired on Thursday 1st April 2021 on BBC Two.