BREATHTAKING - itv 9pm -mon 19 - wed 21 - TV PACE NO SPOILERS

[Blondeshavemorefun]

This looks really good and meant to be very powerful

3 parts on this week mon Tue and wed

After the huge impact of Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, another social and political reckoning could be coming with the searing new three-part drama (https://www.stylist.co.uk/tag/drama) Breathtaking.

Based on palliative care doctor and writer Rachel Clarke’s personal memoir about the Covid-19 crisis, the hard-hitting series is an account of the life of a frontline NHS doctor through the pandemic.

“There is so much misinformation and rewriting of history around what really happened inside our hospitals during the pandemic,” says Clarke.

“The truth is, NHS staff gave everything they had in impossible conditions that sometimes cost them their lives.

It is an honour to try and depict the courage and decency of my NHS colleagues on screen, and I’m so grateful to ITV and HTM Television for giving me the
chance to show the public the truth.”

The three-part series is based on Rachel Clarke’s personal memoir, where she wrote about her own experience of working during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Set in a fictional big-city hospital, the drama narrates how frontline medical staff endured fear and frustration as they desperately tried to save the lives of coronavirus patients,” reads the show’s synopsis.

It recounts the devastating impact of the pandemic through the eyes of acute medicine consultant Dr Abbey Henderson (Froggatt).

Who is in the cast of Breathtaking?
• Joanne Froggatt as Dr. Abbey Henderson.
• George Georgiou as Hue.
• Lucy Montgomery as Clare Boxall.
• Georgia Goodman as Divina Aquino.
• Jodie McNee as Jules Jarmen.
• Mark Dexter as Mike.
• Bhav Joshi as Dr. Ant Vyas.
• Henry Meredith as Tommy.

This scene as she came out of the hospital! What on earth!

@daffodilandtulip thats really shit

I hope someone writes a drama about what was happening in the wider community.

The bit where the queen said we'll see our friends again actually made me a bit emotional looking back on it all.

The bit on the radio was very poignant.

Did she really get that phone call after with the veiled threat?!

It's so interesting to see how the public view of the NHS changed over the year.

Are there stories of real life whistleblowers who were disciplined or lost their job for speaking out?

I think it's been brilliantly done but I do think that it's still too raw for everyone to have done it just yet.

I think the addition of the footage of the people who didn't believe it all was done really well

I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me the NHS treat whistle blowers wit contempt .

I really debated whether to watch or not and after watching the first episode,I had to watch the others straight away or I knew I would never come back to it. As a nurse married to a paramedic with 2 primary aged children,I can say this has very much captured the reality of what we lived through. In 20 years of nursing,I have never known the distressing atmosphere in the hospital and fear of the unknown those early weeks brought followed by months of exposure to the most dreadful situations whilst constantly worrying about the children. Then,after working throught Christmas and new year 2020 my husband contracted covid,spent weeks in hospital and we very nearly lost him. The scene where the girls are brought in to say goodbye to their mum.was hugely triggering for me,it could have been us and I am so beyond grateful that he was saved by the amazing care of my own colleagues. This time and his illness and subsequent extended period of recovery have had a profound effect on the children. So forgive me for having absolutely zero tolerance for anyone who questions if COVID was real,or as bad as all that or makes comments like a few have on this thread. You have no idea,so educate yourself, it was real,it happened,it really was as bad as the programme shows,and worse. My husband nearly died simply from doing his job,saving the lives of others and we nearly lost him,our children nearly lost their dad. Yet,I am still able to class is as the lucky ones,I just have absolutely no time for people spouting utter harmful, disrespectful nonsense,u really should think before you speak.

I watched the first episode tonight, like many people the scar tissue has grown over many of the difficult personal things that happened to me during that time , it seems like another time and the memories flooded back. Watching clips of Boris reassuring us and us naively believing the lies was difficult to watch , the dreadful conditions that all the hospital staff were working under and the lack of Poe and people dying with the virus was horrifying . No wonder the investigation into that time has been deferred until after the election . I will continue to watch all the episodes but not easy viewing and horrific for those hospital staff who worked through that time , let’s hope we learn from it !

Maybe they will but it would cover many different stories from everyday workers ,buissness, s not being ale to.stay afloat school.kids being off and " taught " at home , people being furloughed etc etc
They would have to cover many different angles

Derek Draper was 'an outlier ' too. It doesn't make him any less dead.

Its not just deaths though is it
A friend of my sister caught Covid early on in the pandemic ,she was in her 40,s slim ,vegan
And healthy ,shes got long Covid and angina now she can't work as shes not physically well enough lots of people have suffered with long Covid to.some degrees
And that's not to mention how traumatised some staff must have felt working in the thick of it .

@Muramba

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. You are quoting stats that no one knew .

It was all unknown. It rolled in like a tsunami. NHS was unprepared.

Why would you compare it to a profession where people are dealing with known and acknowledged situations? 🤦‍♀️

You have all the big talk now but it was an evolving situation. Why on earth shouldn't people complain or have been overwhelmed or fearful?

No they don't I'm 50 I have never known another pandemic in my life time the last big one wss the Spanish flu over a hundred years ago when my long dead grandparents were children.

Oh dear. This thread's taking a bit of a turn

*For further context, during WW2, the odds of a new Spitfire pilot surviving beyond their tenth mission were just 10%. All young men, mostly under the age of 25. 90% died in the line of duty. Lest we ever forget who the true heroes are in this country.

I think they'd have all viewed working in the front line NHS during Covid as a luxury holiday.

As ever, context is everything.*

The logic of this is nuts.

Because those pilots suffered no one else can.?

And maybe by comparison , they would have viewed it as a holiday - but so what ?
It doesn't nullify the ordeal experienced by those experiencing covid at the sharp end either.

There is no monopoly on trauma.

@x2boys The Aids epidemic?

This was exactly what I was thinking about this comment!

I'm a Midwife. I was 21 weeks pregnant with my son and I remember starting a night shift where the shift leader told us that if we had a Covid positive woman who's baby was in distress and she needed a section under GA, that the team wouldn't be allowed into theatre for 20mins after the GA due to it being an aerosol generating procedure and something to do with the air circulation systems in theatre.

Even if during that 20mins we were listening to the baby dying.

I was 50% terrified to be in that position as a Midwife, and 50% terrified that it might happen to me when I had my baby.

We were told we still had to work patient facing until 28 weeks, even though pregnant women were considered high risk.

I'm grateful that we had very few covid positive pregnant women coming through in those early days, but colleagues of mine who were also trained as nurses were redeployed to ITU and it was horrific for them.

The scene with the clapping and pots and pans wound me right up , I absolutely hated it then and it makes me cringe to be reminded of it now

*We knew who was and who was not at risk by March 2020. Chris Whitty gave a speech saying so:

twitter.com/i/status/1603369498765033473

The Diamond Princess petri dish confirmed this was the case in real time.*

Odds and statistical theorem don't keep you warm when your in an itu ward full of people struggling to breath.