Breathtaking, a new medical drama starring former Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt, who played housemaid Anna Bates in the period drama, is set to hit the small screen tonight, with the actress playing the character of Dr Abbey Henderson.
But what many viewers might not realise about the new ITV series is how the show draws on the real life experiences of NHS’s Dr Rachel Clarke, who spent years working in wards and experienced the horror of Covid-19’s first wave in early 2020.
The fresh new series takes a mixed approach to storytelling, interposing real life footage from government press conferences with dramatic retellings of actual events. Froggatt recently told ITV that all the patient cases featured on the show were based on real situations involving real patients.
The Golden Globe-winning actress explained that the show is meant to tell “the story we as the public were fortunate enough not to have dealings with”, giving audiences a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most troubled times in recent NHS memory.
How was the series created?
Breathtaking is based on a book of the same name published by Dr Clarke in 2021, based on her own traumatic personal experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic, which received many positive reviews from the UK press.
The series was co-written by Jed Mercurio, another doctor who has since made a successful career as a writer. He has drawn on his own medical experience to become arguably one the most acclaimed UK TV writers of recent memory.
Mercurio won numerous awards of his first police drama The Line of Duty, including nods from Royal Television Society Award and Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Drama Series.
But that wasn’t Mercurio’s only critically acclaimed piece of TV writing. His 2018 political drama The Bodyguard received numerous nominations, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series in Drama. Prasanna Puwanarajah, another former NHS doctor who worked in reconstructive care, collaborated on the screenplay of Breathtaking.
Who is Dr Rachel Clarke?
Dr Clarke is broadcast journalist turned medical doctor who has spent most of her career working in palliative care – the treatment of those who are terminally ill or dying.
Breathtaking isn’t the first time Clarke had taken up a pen to discuss her life in the NHS. She wrote Your Life In My Hands, which was published in 2017, and has roughly 1,888 Amazon ratings. The doctor also penned Dear Life, a book exploring death, in January 2020.
Outside of her medical and literary careers, Clarke is also notable for her political campaigning. She’s been extremely critical in the press of Jeremy Hunt’s policies around the NHS, in particular a contract offered by the then health secretary to junior doctors in 2016. She’s also appeared on BBC’s Question Time.
How did Joanne Froggatt prepare for the role?
The cast’s preparation for the series involved dipping into the lives of real NHS doctors and staff.
The entire cast were involved in a two-week boot camp, where they learned practical medical skills such as how to take a gown off, and when it’s appropriate to touch a patient, as well learning the unique language of UK hospitals.
“And then another part of the rehearsal period – and it’s very unusual to get anything other than basic rehearsal time these days, believe me – was aimed at getting all of us to get our heads and mouths around so many verbal terms that doctors and ward staff use,” she recently told the Yorkshire Post. “To them, they know precisely what they’re saying. For us, we had to learn quickly, and to say things with assurance.”
Froggatt found the process taxing on a personal level, telling newspaper that she cried during her preparation for acting in the new series.