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  2. Where does Dear England end? The BBC series pushes past the play's final whistle
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Where does Dear England end? The BBC series pushes past the play's final whistle

written by Craig Ellison
 Editorial Policy
Where does Dear England end? The BBC series pushes past the play's final whistle
Image credit: Google Veo 3

James Graham's Dear England always had a problem football writers know well: the story kept moving after the curtain came down. The four-part BBC One adaptation — broadcast from 24 May to 1 June 2026, with Joseph Fiennes reprising his stage role as Gareth Southgate — finally gets to write the whole thing.

And that means it ends somewhere the original play never reached.

Where the play stopped

The stage version, which premiered at the National Theatre in June 2023 and won the Olivier for Best New Play, closed on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar — Harry Kane's missed penalty against France, repeating the fate of his mentor. Graham always knew events would overtake him. After the Euro 2024 final, he told BBC Breakfast exactly what he planned to do about it:

"I am [going to rewrite the ending]. You have to, don't you?" Graham said in July 2024.

The play got its new ending when it returned to the National Theatre in 2025. The TV series, made by The Crown producers Left Bank Pictures, builds that final act in from the start.

What the series covers

Across four episodes of roughly 57 minutes, the drama takes in the full eight-year Southgate era:

  • The 2018 World Cup — the culture reset with psychologist Pippa Grange (Jodie Whittaker), and England's first World Cup shoot-out win, against Colombia.
  • Euro 2020 — the run to Wembley, the final defeat to Italy, and the racist abuse aimed at the players who missed.
  • Qatar 2022 — the quarter-final exit and Kane's penalty, where the play originally ended.
  • Euro 2024 — the new material, including an imagined conversation between young Southgate and John Major (Stephen Mackintosh) after the 1996 miss.

So where does it end?

With the whole arc completed. The final episode plays out Euro 2024 in Germany: England reach the final in Berlin as favourites, then lose 2-1 to Spain, Mikel Oyarzabal scoring the winner in the 86th minute.

Where does Dear England end? The BBC series pushes past the play's final whistle - image 1

The drama then follows Southgate's resignation — announced in real life on 16 July 2024, when he told fans in an FA statement that "it's time for change, and for a new chapter" — and even imagines a handover conversation with incoming manager Thomas Tuchel.

No trophy. But the series frames the ending as a win of a different kind: Southgate reflects on his Dear England open letter, lets go of the ghost of his own 1996 penalty, and leaves behind a team the country actually likes again.