Harrowing true story and real doctor behind ITV's Covid drama Breathtaking

19 February 2024 , 19:30

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ITV's Breathtaking stars Joanne Froggatt as an NHS frontline doctor (Image: chris barr)

It's been almost four years since the coronavirus pandemic began - and now a new ITV drama will lay bare the sacrifices NHS doctors made.

Breathtaking follows consultant Dr Abbey Henderson and her team as they work under hideous pressures to navigate the first wave of Covid-19 while running out of PPE, beds and staff. Abbey, played by Downton Abbey actress Joanne Froggatt, says the show will reveal the 'truth' of life in hospitals weeks before the UK's first national lockdown.

Speaking about landing the role, the Golden Globe winner said: "When I first read the incredible scripts, they moved me to tears on many occasions. I felt so passionately that I had to be a part of telling this story, the real story, of what was really happening behind the closed doors of the hospitals during the pandemic."

Joanne felt moved to tears by the scripts and was passionate about telling the real story (PA)

The ITV series is based on Dr Rachel Clarke's reality at the beginning of the pandemic (Matthew Chattle/REX/Shutterstock)

Joanne added: "Our NHS staff are nothing less than absolute heroes in my eyes, and I hope telling this story goes a little way towards us understanding their truth, their lived experience and honouring their unbelievable commitment and sacrifice on behalf of us all."

The three-part series, which begins tonight, is set in a fictional big-city hospital and is based on Dr Rachel Clarke's book of the same name. She wrote a recollection of her heartbreaking and moving experiences as a palliative care doctor working on the frontline during the pandemic in 2020.

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Of the show, Rachel said: "There is so much misinformation and rewriting of history around what really happened inside our hospitals during the pandemic. 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." Former junior hospital doctors Jed Mercurio - of Line of Duty fame - and Prasanna Puwanarajah also helped to adapt Rachel's book for the screen.

Rachel was working in Oxfordshire when patients with Covid started arriving at her hospital four years ago. As the storm unfolded, with medics quickly running out of beds and equipment, and colleagues getting infected and tragically dying, Rachel kept a daily diary for comfort.

She told of her heartbreak as patients arrived and she knew they'd never see a human face again. Or how most victims were too sick to make it to intensive care. Sometimes, between six and eight patients died on her Covid ward in one day, something she described as, "the hideous, industrial scale of death after death after death."

"People think the pandemic happened in intensive care. The vast majority of people who died never went near intensive care," she told the Guardian. "They were too frail and too sick to cope with the treatment of a ventilator."

Dr Clarke described how she felt like she was in "a submarine that you couldn't escape from," as oxygen ran out before the first lockdown, and patients were forced to die alone with only a masked medic for comfort. She explains how they had to keep devastated relatives away from their loved ones, all the while worrying about what they were taking home to their own families.

"Whenever I talk about the pandemic with colleagues there are tears," she told ITV. She said staff were called heroes, but they were just ordinary human beings doing their jobs and trying to be brave. Rachel never envisioned making her diary public, but felt she couldn't stay silent anymore after the Dominic Cummings scandal.

It was Rachel's anger towards the Conservative staff at No. 10 that made her share her diary. Pictured are Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson (Getty Images)

After the former Chief Advisor breached lockdown rules by travelling 260 miles to visit family in Durham, Rachel was done with being quiet. Speaking about the 'Government's lies' during the pandemic, Rachel told the Metro: "Boris Johnson lied over and over again when they claimed that the NHS was not overwhelmed. We were rationing care."

Of the former PM and former Health Secretary Matt Hancock - who broke social distancing rules by hooking up with his aide - Rachel added: "It's unforgivable. It'll make me burn with rage for the rest of my life that they both stood up in front of the British public and lied." She said the pair owe all 1.3 million NHS staff members a 'massive apology'.

The frontline medic believes it is incredibly important to tell the story of Covid to prevent 'historical revisionism', whereby officials deny that major events took place. She told the publication: "The legacy of this pandemic is ongoing. It's not done and dusted. Covid is still around." Over 230,000 deaths have been attributed to Covid and over 100,000 people are living with long Covid.

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ITV has described its latest drama as a tale based on real experiences of NHS staff and patients during the pandemic, but explained the hospital and characters have been "created for dramatic purposes". So while the story is true, the characters are fictional.

Director Craig Viveiros said the miniseries, shot in Northern Ireland last year, was filmed in long, real-time sequences to "allow the audience to be immersed in the struggles our real-life heroes faced in the wards and emergency departments across the country". He added: "This story is a chance for their voices and sacrifices to be seen and heard."

Nia Dalton