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.

Tbh about the politicians i mostly don't feel much. They were inadequate to the job but we voted them in.

I would have liked to have a strand about a civil servant grappling with eg trying to buy PPE along with every other government on the planet, or a doctor in Public Health England trying to actually write the guidelines.

Guess I'd better read the book.

I didn't vote them in. Certainly not Johnson. Perhaps he might just organise a piss up in a brewery, his special USP.

I didn't vote for any of the tory pm's either .

Ah @JenniferBooth is here.

Surprise.

@Norugratsatall and @colouringindoors I thought that might be the case, I think I’ll swerve it and not watch xx

Whats that supposed to mean. I asked a perfectly legitimate question. And that is whether or not they are going to show untested people being sent into care homes. You know like Channel 4 had the guts to with Help.

And as it IS supossed to be all about the health why were people in quarantine hotels getting food poisoning from the cheap slop they were being served so the companies doing it could make more profit.

Just watched the first episode ( didn’t know all 3 were already available to watch). Harrowing but well done. I thought I would cry as I lost a dear family friend to Covid but I didn’t, perhaps because it was unsentimental. Definitely not like a medical soap.

Watched it tonight. I find Covid-related shows difficult to watch, it's still so close in time and yet so surreal, my brain doesn't want to remember or delve into the horrors of that time again. And yet we're reminded of the awful legacy every day, in people being sick, dead, traumatised, MH issues being at an all time high, long NHS lists, in fucked up economy, well, the list goes on...it's sadly all too familiar for us all.

It's easy to look in hindsight and say, oh, we shouldn't have done this or that, or we should've done things differently. But nobody knew for a while what was actually going to happen, it was an unprecedented time in our lifetime. Watching this tonight reminded me of that very dark day of the pandemic when the statistics exceeded some extreme numbers of deaths per day, I don't even remember if it was 1,000 or 10,000, but I remember the sheer terror of the realisation it didn't pick and choose and people not much older than me were dead.

I look back and think personally it wasn't that bad when I had it, but how horrid it was for many other people.

How absolutely awful for the NHS staff to be exposed to it without adequate protection, in such high loads. How dreadful to have to operate in line with ridiculous guidelines aimer at covering up woeful incompetence of the Conservative governments and lack of preparedness to the pandemic, not at protecting the very people who were making the change on the ground and helping the sick.

I have no idea how many NHS staff are still traumatised, left or burnt out, but itsa disgrace they were in that war zone and now they're yet again picking up the pieces.

I have had bad experiences with the NHS pre-pandemic and there's no excuse, but I do have more sympathy towards critical care staff, it's unbelievable what they were put through. Nobody can be prepared for being surrounded by unknown danger, constantly at risk, watching people die alone day in day out on hardly any sleep and having to liaise with their families too. It's inhumane.

Boris Johnson should never be allowed back into public life, he's a permanent disgrace.

There, I've spilled it out. The series brought up many difficult emotions. Joanne Frogatt is very good.

Haven't seen all the programmes yet @JenniferBooth so don't know about the care homes, and why the distraction about a couple in a hotel?

Stick to the programme.

Just watched the first episode. It definitely highlights how the nhs workers put there life on the line to try and help everyone with out adequate protection for themselves. It must have been like a war zone. It also highlights how slow we were to react,relying on out of date guidance when we should have listened to the frontline. The government have so much blood on their hands.

Either its about health or it isnt. I AM sticking to the programme. The quarantines were because of the pandemic.

I watched my 18 year old skip off to uni to become a paramedic...a haunted young man returned two years later as he didn't want to bring it home. He still won't talk about what he experienced. I will never forgive the inadequate politicians in charge..and those who made money on the back of it.
I hope people remember this at the next election.

@placemats WTF did i just read? You dont know about the care homes??? It was all over the press at the time.

I guess what was said on the Mr Bates vs. the Post Office thread is true then. That we have to wait for an ITV drama before some people actually realise what went on.

It was also in the Hancock WhatsApps which were released a year ago.

She meant she didn't know if the programme mentioned about the care homes!!
Not that she didn't know about what happened with the care homes!

I did know about the care homes, its why I declined to go and help them - have a family member who works in the home office.

oh i see.

Might be a good time for Channel 4 to repeat Help

I still feel slightly guilty about it though.

@placemats Back in March 2020 DH said to me "if you were still working in a care home i would be asking you to leave now"

If you think hospitals lacked PPE, care homes were much worse.

He's right of course @JenniferBooth

Makes me feel better.

@placemats dont feel guilty.

I didn't vote for the government either but obviously enough people did.

I've watched two episodes now. I think it's pretty good. Very damped down and not too soapy.

I wouldn't feel guilty at all if the choice was do I go and help or not in the circumstances where the government failed to provide basic equipment even to hospitals and paramedics, and the care sector was even worse provided for and hung out dry.

Nobody would go to seriously fight a war without weapons and in shorts and flip flops, it would be borderline suicidal. That's not being selfish. Those who took risks in covid to protect others really are a very special, devoted kind of people, or they felt they had absolutely no other choice at the time. They should never be in such position.