Tear-jerking scene in ITVs new three-part Covid drama Breathtaking
- ITV’s drama lays naked the horrors seen by NHS workers throughout Covid’s darkest days
- It is tailored from a e book authored by palliative care physician Dr Rachel Clarke
A tear-jerking scene in ITV‘s new three-part Covid drama reveals a affected person being left to die in an ambulance.
Pandemic-era guidelines – illustrated in tonight’s 9pm episode of Breathtaking – stopped medics in some trusts from performing CPR with out satisfactory PPE.
As a results of the pink tape, the person was left untreated for 20 minutes behind an ambulance as he arrived on the hospital.
Rushed by paramedics who must return to the roads, Dr Abbey Henderson, performed by Downton Abbey star Joanna Froggatt, fights again tears as she declares the affected person lifeless earlier than strolling again to her Covid ward, as an acute medication advisor.
Writers of ITV’s subsequent masterpiece assume their creation — based mostly on actual experiences of frontline medics — might unleash the identical nationwide outcry as Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
Pandemic-era guidelines – illustrated in tonight’s 9pm episode of Breathtaking – stopped medics in some trusts from performing CPR with out satisfactory PPE. As a results of the pink tape, the person was left untreated for 20 minutes behind an ambulance as he arrived on the hospital. Rushed by paramedics who must return to the roads, Dr Abbey Henderson, performed by Downton Abbey star Joanna Froggatt, fights again tears as she declares the affected person lifeless earlier than strolling again to her Covid ward, as an acute medication advisor
Tonight’s opener, known as Containment , covers the three important weeks main as much as the unique March 2020 lockdown . Picking up on March 3, the drama follows Dr Henderson’s division working in a chilly zone – considered low danger zones with no Covid sufferers
Elsewhere, points with PPE see medics unable to deal with sufferers battling respiratory sicknesses with enough safety. Abiding by strict Public Health England (PHE) pointers means different suspected chilly zone sufferers can’t be examined for the virus, leaving them unable to entry probably lifesaving therapies and exposing the virus to the ward
Some of the scenes had been so harrowing that Froggatt even cried after studying the script.
Breathtaking’s plot all occurs by the fictional Dr Henderson’s eyes at one unnamed metropolis hospital in England.
Tonight’s opener, known as Containment, covers the three important weeks main as much as the unique March 2020 lockdown.
Picking up on March 3, the drama follows Dr Henderson’s division working in a chilly zone – considered low danger zones with no Covid sufferers.
It receives its first affected person contaminated with the virus, a person picked up by medics in hazmat fits instantly from Heathrow Airport.
Elsewhere, points with PPE see medics unable to deal with sufferers battling respiratory sicknesses with enough safety.
Dr Henderson fails her PPE security take a look at because it has been designed for a person. In the background, a colleague remarks she will be able to purchase her personal gear on Amazon for in extra of £300.
Nurses start fashioning their very own from bin baggage whereas schoolkids ship in do-it-yourself visors to the hospital.
Abiding by strict Public Health England (PHE) pointers means different suspected chilly zone sufferers can’t be examined for the virus, leaving them unable to entry probably lifesaving therapies and exposing the virus to the ward.
As the scenario darkens, archival footage of ex-health secretary Matt Hancock and former deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries are heard boasting concerning the UK’s ‘clear plan’ to deal with Covid and satisfactory shares of PPE.
Clips of ex-PM Boris Johnson additionally present him speaking about shaking fingers with Covid sufferers.
At the time, the international loss of life toll had already exceeded 3,100 and the UK stood at 51 confirmed instances.
Time stamps logged all through the episode present simply how rapidly the scenario — and PHE steering — modified.
Hospital workers communicate to Italian colleagues who hospitals have already been devastated by the virus.
The virus had already unfold to greater than half of Italy’s 20 areas, together with Tuscany and Sicily, with instances exceeding 2.500. More than a dozen cities had been already additionally beneath lockdown.
Just in the future later, its Government would announce all colleges and universities had been to shut.
Meanwhile, because the hospital runs dangerously near working out of oxygen, medics are compelled to forestall visits from family and friends members to sufferers on their deathbeds.
As the scenario darkens, archival footage of ex-health secretary Matt Hancock and former deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries are heard boasting concerning the UK’s ‘clear plan’ to deal with Covid and satisfactory shares of PPE
Dr Henderson fails her PPE security take a look at because it has been designed for a person. In the background, a colleague remarks she will be able to purchase her personal gear on Amazon for in extra of £300. Nurses start fashioning their very own from bin baggage whereas schoolkids ship in do-it-yourself visors to the hospital
Time stamps logged all through the episode present simply how rapidly the scenario — and PHE steering — modified. Hospital workers communicate to Italian colleagues who hospitals have already been devastated by the virus
‘It was by no means out of my thoughts that each state of affairs we had been filming was based mostly on an actual state of affairs,’ Froggatt mentioned within the run-up to the discharge of the episode.
‘Every affected person character is predicated on an actual particular person and their actual household and their actual family members.
‘All of the actors and crew had been continuously asking the true docs and nurses “How did you do this?”
‘People had been doing 4 hours at a time in ITU in full PPE which is sizzling. And proning sufferers — shifting sufferers from their again to their entrance — which could be very arduous work.
‘In actual life you’ll be able to’t go to the john, you’ll be able to’t sip water or have a snack. Once you are in that PPE you’ll be able to’t let something in,’ she added.
‘I can not actually comprehend how tough it will need to have been to do it for actual.’
Breathtaking is tailored from a memoir of the identical title, authored by NHS palliative care physician Dr Rachel Clarke.
It is co-written with Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah, finest generally known as an actor, most just lately as Martin Bashir in The Crown. Both are additionally former docs.
Clarke mentioned their rule whereas writing was to place nothing within the script that did not occur someplace in actual life.
It is just not the one drama to the touch as regards to how Britain was hit by Covid and the failures that ensued to serving to shield these in healthcare.
In 2021, Channel 4 drama Help, which starred Jodie Comer, noticed her act as a care employee in a fictional Liverpool care dwelling to shine a lightweight on the traumas confronted throughout the pandemic.
Breathtaking is tailored from a memoir of the identical title, authored by NHS palliative care physician Dr Rachel Clarke. Pictured, Dr Clarke showing on Lorraine at the moment
Prasanna Puwanarajah, who performed journalist Martin Bashir within the season 5 on Netflix’s royal drama ‘The Crown’ is one other author behind Breathtaking. Pictured right here in London in November 2022.
Writer, Jed Mercurio of Line of Duty fame, mentioned Breathtaking adopted an identical theme of the requirements we count on in those that maintain public workplace. Here Mercurio is pictured receiving his OBE medal in February 2022
The four-part collection ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’ tells the story of a long-running marketing campaign to show the Horizon IT system scandal, during which a whole lot of Post Office workers had been wrongfully accused of theft and fraud (L-R: Julie Hesmondhalgh as Suzanne Sercombe, Toby Jones as Alan Bates, Monica Dolan as Jo Hamilton and Asif Khan as Mohammad Sabir)
What is most essential to Clarke, in bringing Breathtaking to the small display screen, is ensuring NHS workers impacted by Covid ‘really feel seen’.
She mentioned: ‘One of the principle themes of the drama is reality telling and the matter of whose story, whose reality is heard and whose story is silenced.
‘So, all the unfolding of the story contained in the hospital is one which has not been advised very loudly on a public stage.
‘I needed to handle that gulf between the Government’s public narrative of Covid and the unfolding actuality inside the NHS as a result of partly that gulf has an enormous human affect.
She added: ‘I hope that when NHS workers watch the collection they really feel seen. I hope they’re going to assume: “That’s me, that’s what I went through. That is my testimony and now the public knows what it was like.”‘
Breathtaking airs on ITV1 tonight at 9pm.
