Thursday 9pm FRONTLINE: The Virus That Shook The World – Investigative Series
The epic story of how people around the world lived through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic from lockdowns to funerals to protests.
Filmed in 21 countries across the globe and using extensive personal video and local footage, FRONTLINE documented how people and countries responded to COVID-19 across cultures, races, faiths and privilege.
The Virus That Shook the World, a two-part documentary special chronicling the first year of the coronavirus pandemic through the eyes of people all over the world — from a hot dog vendor in New York City to a ballet dancer in Moscow; from a food blogger in Wuhan to a filmmaker in a remote Indigenous village in Brazil.
Over the course of two nights, from lockdowns to funerals to protests, this documentary shares intimate and unforgettable glimpses into how the pandemic has played out in the lives, homes and communities of people around the world. We meet a doctor in the United Kingdom who works at what would become the first hospital in the world to administer a COVID-19 vaccine; she is still haunted by the memory of the first patient she treated who died from the disease.
The film also illuminates differences between how wealthy and low-income people have experienced the pandemic, and COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and other people of color in the U.S. and elsewhere.
By juxtaposing the experiences of different people all around the world throughout the first year of the pandemic, The Virus That Shook the World offers a uniquely panoramic view of how the coronavirus has created ripples of profound loss, restructured how people across the world live their lives, and amplified existing inequities.
