Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On review – is it time to wake up from this collective amnesia?

The Guardian

24-03-2025

'Remember the pandemic?' In 2025, it's something you might say after spotting a person wearing a face mask on the street, or being temporarily stunned by the sudden recollection of the 2-metre rule, or people hosing down their weekly shop. Of course, few adults will have forgotten about a global pandemic that officially ended only two years ago – not least because, for many, Covid-19 infections still cause significant health issues. But, generally speaking, the world has moved on, and you can see why it might seem that the nation is experiencing collective amnesia about an event that resulted in the highest death toll since the second world war.
For some, this feels like a betrayal. Families who lost loved ones to the virus are not just incapable of putting the pandemic out of their minds, they are determined not to. As Covid fades from our lives and our lexicon, they worry that the victims are at risk of being forgotten too.
This feature-length programme from documentary-maker Catey Sexton is an attempt to ensure that doesn't happen. Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On is dedicated to remembering people who died from Covid, including Sexton's mother, who died in a care home. We hear about nurses, carers, bus drivers, young people, elderly people, those with disabilities, fathers and mothers. The film gives bereaved families the chance to pay tribute to their late loved ones, not with overblown praise but by talking about their hobbies, their values and their quirks, and sometimes even gently ribbing them (for their dad dancing or love of a good moan).
Sexton's subjects are from every corner of the UK and a variety of backgrounds. Those who died were adults of all ages, and they caught the virus in different ways: some as key workers, some in care homes, some when lockdown was lifted. The point is to show that Covid was, to a certain extent, indiscriminate, but it is also to humanise the statistics we were fed during the height of the pandemic, when most of us were numbed – perhaps necessarily – to the acute individual suffering they represented.
Each portrait is full of love, and predictably heartbreaking. Yet they are also insightful. The more we hear about the nature of these deaths, the more we can understand the shades of grief that are particular to the pandemic. Relatives are not only traumatised, but left suspended in a state of disbelief – some due to being denied a funeral service, others because they could not be at their loved one's side when they died.
Bound up with the enduring shock is a sense of guilt and regret – misplaced, of course, but so understandable. Some of this has to do with listening to medical advice: when the parents of 21-year-old Chloe were told by paramedics not to worry about her condition because young people weren't dying of the virus at that time, they felt reassured. She died the same day. When Femi caught the virus, his GP told him to stay at home. He died on the sofa. When his daughter talks about his death, she addresses him directly: 'I'm really sorry, Dad, I really wish that we did more.'
The idea that anyone blames themselves for these tragedies – especially considering that this was a time when our freedoms were almost completely curtailed – is extraordinarily sad. Blaming the state might be a more rational option. The final stretch of the programme briefly covers the continuing inquiry into the country's handling of the pandemic. Although detailing the specific mistakes and compromises made by the government is largely outside this documentary's remit, it does explain how important it is for the bereaved to dredge meaning from the mess. Sexton admits that her search for answers about why so many died in care homes is a coping mechanism. For others, trying to protect the UK from another botched response to a future pandemic gives them purpose amid such senseless loss.
Occasionally, this programme recounts the pandemic narrative in an over simplistic way, but Sexton is not aiming to provide a rigorous history. Instead, she has focused on capturing an emotional reality. For most of us, the pandemic was like a bad dream from which we have woken. But not for these families. At one point, a bereaved father says he wishes he could go back in time and warn people about Covid. It is magical thinking about a surreal period in our history that, as this programme evocatively shows, has left so many permanent scars.
Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now