New ITV drama Breathtaking written by Oxfordshire doctor
A new ITV drama written by an Oxfordshire doctor will give an insight into the sacrifices doctors made during the pandemic.
Last updated 19th Feb 2024
The first episode airs tonight at 9pm and stars Joanne Froggatt who will play Dr Rachel Clarke the shows writer and palliative care doctor.
Breathtaking is based off a book with the same title written by Dr Rachel Clarke, who worked as a palliative care doctor in Oxfordshire when patients with Covid started arriving at her hospital.
Four years ago Rachel found herself wrapped up in a pandemic which none of us could have seen coming.
What followed was catastrophic she says: "There was a lack of beds, a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), colleagues working under hideous pressure, colleagues dying."
Working through the pandemic led to Rachel retelling her experiences in a book, which she has wrote alongside Line Of Duty creator Jed Mercurio and The Crown actor Prasanna Puwanarajah who were both junior doctors before making the transition to TV.
"Watching it immediately takes me back there, I've found myself crying at times because it brings back so much emotion."
The hard-hitting drama will be shown on three consecutive nights, with Joanne Froggatt playing Rachel Clarke as she tries desperately to cope with an influx of Covid patients.
In order to play the role the former Downton Abbey actress attended a medical bootcamp to gain understanding of the terminology.
With the UK Covid Inquiry now underway, Rachel Clarke said: "it is essential that lessons are learned from what happened four years ago."
"We were on wards where we had no PPE, nurses were making their own PPE from bin bags."
Reffering to the recent ITV documentary about the post office scandal Rachel said: "I hope that in the same way Breathtaking, is also an example of a series that through putting a story on screen that's full of characters you deeply care about, it will galvanise the public and make them feel angry.
Rachel believes the drama should act as a memorial to the 850 NHS workers who died the pandemic.