Dear England review: This tale of Southgate's England should remind us football can still be a beautiful game

What I've Been Watching Saturday, May 30, 2026

It's a view shared – at least temporarily – by Gareth Southgate in Dear England (BBC1, Sun/Mon, 9pm), a TV adaptation of James Graham's hit stage play.

Given the “poisoned chalice” of the England manager's job when 'Big' Sam Allardyce was caught giving advice on how to circumvent transfer rules, Southgate immediately tells his players that – unlike the rest of the country – he believes they won't win the upcoming World Cup 2018.

Crucially, however, Southgate – played with an eerie verisimilitude by Joseph Fiennes – tells the squad it will be a crucial step along the way to winning the World Cup in 2022.

He takes the pressure off the players. “Now, you can breathe,” he tells them.

Dear England highlights the dichotomy of the England men's football team. The fact that we all want them to win, but are quick to hammer them when they don't.

That we want results, but crave entertainment.

That we claim we want the players to be role models, to lead the nation, but any tiny sign they might stray outside their sporting sphere to raise important issues and certain factions tell them to get back in their lane.

It's part of the reason why Southgate was such a refreshing change as England manager, a change accurately captured by Dear England.

He adjusted the expectations, not just of the players, but of the nation.

He made the way the players behaved – with each other and with the public – as important to the England effort as the way they played.

He tells his players: “It's about how we conduct ourselves, and how we bring people together, that lasts beyond the summer. That lasts forever.”

Dear England doesn't ignore the outside world – it draws in the threads of Brexit, and Covid, and the things we both divided and united the wider community and illustrates how the successes and failures of the team can affect the mood of the nation.

But it's also about identity, and how it can mean different things to different people. It's also about how it's too easy to see the differences and not the similarities.

After all, these footballers come from the same places we do: “These places sound like s**t places, but these are our places.”

We all know what happened to Southgate's England, the so-nears-and-yet-so-fars of 2021, 2022 and 2024, but Dear England does a decent job of recreating the excitement, the nerves, the whole Sweet Caroline joy of it all.

And you might think that, despite Fiennes uncanny portrayal of the boss, capturing his quiet determination the inner strength of a man widely underestimated, the whole could be ruined by shoddy lookalikes of Saka, Kane, Pickford et al.

But that's not the case. None of the actors particularly resemble the players they're playing, as it were, but they carry enough of the physical characteristics and emotional essence of them that you know immediately who they are.

The only thing that doesn't entirely convince is an under-utilised Jodie Whittaker as Dr Pippa Grange, the squad psychologist brought in to improve the players' mental health and resilience.

Beyond giving the players journals to record their innermost thoughts, it's hard to get a grip on how much she changed the culture around the time, relegating her to being 'the penalty whisperer'.

However, beyond that, it's a useful reminder that maybe we shouldn't invest so much in these players, these coaches, this manager.

It's a reminder that they are individuals like us, English like us and – like us – they mess up sometimes.

And it's a reminder that this is a game, so let's enjoy the ride, wherever it ends.