Dear England drama: 'A story of real hope' says writer

For writer James Graham, football and drama have more in common than you might think.

The creator of Dear England says both can unite us - either around a tournament or a story - at a time when we might feel divided, and they can get us to reflect on who we want to be.

"It's always captivated me, the drama, the operatic scale of these huge World Cup tournaments," says Graham, who previously wrote Sherwood and Quiz.

And he found the progress of the England men's team under Gareth Southgate "incredibly inspiring".

Southgate managed England for 102 games and led them to two European Championship finals. Under him they won a World Cup penalty shootout for the first time.

The new four-part BBC drama Dear England is based on Graham's Olivier Award-winning play of the same name. It is a fictionalised account of the real events that saw Southgate (played by Joseph Fiennes) transform the team, bringing in psychologist Pippa Grange (played by Jodie Whittaker) to address their problem with penalties by looking at their mindset and the pressure that players faced.

As Southgate, played by Fiennes, says in the series: "I think there's something really wrong here..."

The series also delves into the racist abuse faced by players like Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka after the team's exit from Euro 2020 on penalties.

The name of the BBC drama is reference to the opening line of a heartfelt letter penned by Southgate in which the former manager explains what matters is more than the result of a game: "It's about how we conduct ourselves on and off the pitch, how we bring people together, how we inspire and unite."

Graham says he found the letter and "the aspiration to be decent and to be good" very moving.

Whittaker, known for Doctor Who and Toxic Town, feels the story is particularly important in the lead-up to this summer's World Cup "no matter the outcome, those young men and that entire coaching staff deserve the utmost respect".

Fiennes, known for Young Sherlock and Shakespeare in Love, adds: "Hopefully this gives us an insight into what it's like to take a penalty, to lose a penalty, the ramifications of that."

He adds: "I don't want the team to lose, but I think as a nation, as players, as fans, sometimes we have to learn to lose and get better at it because that's an inevitability of the game. And I hope that people can do that with respect."

The series opens with Southgate having a penalty saved in the Euros semi-finals in 1996, something Graham remembers vividly watching as a child, seeing the player with his hands over his neck walking off the field.

What happened next inspired Graham - how Southgate, "who missed that penalty… broke the World Cup penalty curse".

For Graham, this "is a story of real hope, where something was not working, men were struggling, they looked at it, they fixed it, it improved, and we all felt better about it".

Graham notes football and drama both have the power to bring people together, but he points to an important difference, in his view: while football is often an area where working-class people can thrive, this isn't always the case with drama and the arts.

The writer, who delivered the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2024, notes a report from the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre that only 8% of those working in film, television, radio and photography are from a working-class background.

Growing up working class in a mining village in Nottinghamshire, Graham recalls how important access to the arts were to him as a "shy" kid who found even the prospect of PE "nerve-wracking".

The writer felt "lucky" that his secondary school had a dedicated theatre attached to it adding: "The only reason I'm sat here enjoying chatting to you is the accident of having a really good drama teacher in my comprehensive school."

It's where Graham wrote, was inspired and eventually became part of the first group of people from his small town to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe, one of the world's largest arts festivals.

Graham notes is not the case for everyone and that access to creative subjects like drama and music has "really diminished".

The writer says he's frustrated at the "slow progress" of putting arts back into the curriculum.

Graham notes that the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) does not include an art subject in its core curriculum. The writer feels that "philosophically, the school is telling you there's no value. So as parents, you go, don't pick music. It's not core. We're being told it's not important and it is."

In 2025, following a review of the national curriculum in England, the government set out plans to remove the EBacc to give students more choice.

Under the new arrangements, arts GCSEs will be given equal status, external to humanities and languages.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education says "we're revitalising the curriculum to ensure young people are given the chance to experience the arts, while maintaining a strong academic core," adding that the government is investing £13m in the National Centre for Arts and Music Education.

You can watch Dear England on BBC One from Sunday 24 May at 21:00 BST and on iPlayer.