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.

As a junior doctor I found this really triggering but glad it’s been produced because the public need to know what happened in nhs hospitals. The mask testing at the start was particularly triggering. In my hospital junior doctors were told by management that only consultants could have mask fit testing because they were short of the spray to test staff.
Then the consultants who’d been tested decided that it wasn’t safe to do ward rounds and that they didn’t want to be exposed so instead got the junior doctors to carry out a ward round via teleconference. We’d have to tell them about the patient over the phone , they’d look at the investigations in their office and would then send down sheets of paper to hand out to patients with a treatment plan.

When PPE was downgraded the FFP3 masks and surgical gowns were locked away In a cupboard by the matron. Then when a covid positive patient had a cardiac arrest there was a huge delay in starting cpr because we had to find the matron and wait for her to find the right key for the cupboard.

Er....well don't then?

Wow 😮

This is our history! Should we think any programmes about WW2, the Falklands, the post office scandal are distasteful too.

I bet it gets excellent reviews and widespread acclaim. I 'enjoyed' the first episode.

@rwalker then don't watch nor reply on thread. No need

@AmpleReader that's disgraceful. Is a consultant life more important then a trainee

What happened will make history in years to come

Something that was going to go in 12w is still about 4yrs later - only diff generally not dying from covid now

In maybe 20/50/100yrs time children at school May learn about 2020 or 23/03/20

And be like a date well known in history

1939

1066

1666

Etx

I agree about dates. Whenever we talk about things or remember when we did something, it's always pre-Covid/during/after when trying to work out when something happened.

I lost my mum, in a care home, to Covid. It's still difficult to watch anything about that time but I will probably watch in one "hit" when it's over.

Oh, yes of course. I meant Spain

You find it distasteful that medical staff want the public to know what they endured at the hands of an incompetent (or worse) Government? The book on which the screen play is based was written by Rachel Clarke a Palliative Care Consultant who moved to the Covid wards to work during the pandemic. She lost many colleagues to the disease. Many the cast and crew of the series, also lost loved ones. They say this series is a labour of love that affected them deeply.

Do you know that there was a very large store of PPE in a wearhouse kept for a possible future pandemic for many years. As the PPE became close to its use by date, it was replaced and moved into the NHS to be used up, so there was always a large store available. When the Tories were elected in 2010, they stopped this process to save money (but they always have money available when they want to spend it). This is why NHS staff were deprived of proper protection. And you find it distasteful to highlight this?

@AmpleReader that is horrific. I’m so sorry you had to go through that 💐

Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and co need to be held to account

We were told to just get on with it without knowing if we were wearing properly fitting PPE when we were exposed. The goggles I wore were donated by a secondary school science dept, visors made by members of the public with 3D printers.

Then it got worse when they downgraded the PPE. We knew it wasn’t right and that we were being put at risk but were told by managers ‘those are the guidelines’ and felt left with impossible choices. Chose to get on with it and move out from my home - I knew I was being exposed and put at risk so thought better to limit it to just me.

Then had to watch as one by one colleagues around us caught it and several were later admitted to hospital. Had to say goodbye to some exceptional colleagues and still have nightmares about it

Matt Hancock was MP for Newmarket, with many links to horseracing and large donations from the sport.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/racing/matt-hancock-funded-by-leading-figures-of-wonderful-uk-racing-1.4280397

Dido Harding was on the board of The Jockey Club, which runs Cheltenham, amongst other things...and we all know where she ended up.

Hi i a newbie here. Was in GP land when pandemic hit. We were lucky in that we had enough PPE. The local schools made us visors and goggles. I couldnt get on with visors - they steamed up so used my goggles over my glasses. I was very grateful for them and have kept them as a reminder of a time when the world turned upsidedown.
I recall on a Friday we had a call to say a lady who I had taken blood on earlier inthe week was in hospital with COVID. Mad panic to get tests. had to go to Ikea on the Saturday and wait till Monday for my result. Thankfully I was negative.
I thought the programme was quite good. Not sure if it wasnt a bit early for all the rainbow pics on the wall - think that came later.
I manged to stay COVID free till 2022 and 2024 - now semi retired. I think I had early COVID as very ill with my asthma in Jan 2020. Couldnt shake it off.
One colleague lost her mum to it.
its a hard thing to watch.

I have no interest in watching this find it completely distasteful

It's a free world obviously.

But it also happened and very relevant to many many people.

The program managed to convey the impending dread.

As I watched it I was thinking, what was I doing on that date? And that date?

Near but so so long ago. My time line feels really distorted.

Fucking hell!!!

I started watching this last night and was genuinely wondering how accurate a portrayal it was as it just seemed so ridiculous (the consultant raising issues and just being told these are the guidelines over and over again etc.) that it couldn't possibly have actually happened. But reading this thread just shocks me that this was the reality in the NHS. I guess that's the point of the show though! Massive respect for anyone who worked through that.

@AmpleReader again I have no words what you and colleagues and all nurses and doctors went through 💐💐

I have an inkling due to friends who are nurses but I think after watching e1 and replies on this thread , that they (my friends) tried to cover up his bad it was

Mainly as people seem via this thread, not to beleive what actually happened 🥲🥲😡😡

Journalists were allowed into hospitals to film while relatives were banned. Is this drama going to depict this?

I'm not trying to justify the consultants hiding/junior doctors exposed situation... well, maybe I am. There was a rationale to attempts to limit exposure of clinical teams where possible, and there was clear evidence early on that age was a huge factor in vulnerability. It's just that in Britain the evidence always gets run through a horrible class mangle and comes out with lower status people getting shafted. The most vulnerable people in our Trust were the nurses and the porters. I don't think a single ICU consultant in this country died, did they? Though two ENT surgeons did. Those NHS staff who died were porters, nurses, global majority ethnicities.

https://x.com/LucyGoBag/status/1759887807969927484?s=20

@PermanentTemporary Completely agree I also think thats why they backed down on the vaccine mandate for NHS workers. But pushed it for care workers. The latter is seen as a low status job. It bloody shouldnt be but it is. There was a 40"000 exodus of care workers because of this. Now to compound it Not So Cleverly wants to ban foreign care workers from bringing their families here.

And yet after March 2020, ‘sars Cov 2’ was downgraded and wasn’t classed as an HCID from then on.
Strange don’t you think? 🤔 since the government told us every night that sars Cov 2 features all of the things an HCID is classed as…

Surely they backed down on the vaxx mandate because it’s unlawful 😉.

I've just binged it. I'm still in tears.

I had a grocery delivery just at the start of E3 and poor guy was most concerned at the state of me. He said he'll watch it when he gets home.

I'd forgotten how bloody awful it was, what shits the government were and just what heartbreaking circumstances we all lived in.

Excellent drama, portrayed with dignity and true reality imo.