Breathtaking shows “extraordinary humanity of patients and staff”
The creator of Breathtaking has spoken about showcasing "the very best bits of human nature" in the COVID-19 drama.
ITV's COVID-19 drama came to a close last night – though all three episodes are currently on ITVX – bringing Dr Abbey Henderson's heart-wrenching journey to an end.
Acute medicine consultant Abbey, played by Liar's Joanne Froggatt, had to face many challenges over the three-part series, which is adapted from Dr Rachel Clarke's personal memoir, and which counts Line of Duty's Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah in the production team.
Clarke has been open about drawing on her own harrowing experiences of navigating the first two waves of the pandemic to create the series.
"Because I work in palliative medicine I know, perhaps better than many people, how important our mortality is in making us appreciate how precious life is. And somehow, I think the pandemic was an extreme example of that," she explained.
And though the drama does a great job at highlighting the horrors health professionals and their patients had to face in our not-too-distant past, Clarke also wanted to honour their humanity.
“One of the things I was desperate to try and convey when I was writing the scripts was the extraordinary humanity of patients and staff alike," she said.
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She continued: "Everybody was thrust into view in these horrible, unimaginably traumatic circumstances and yet they seemed so often to rise to the challenge, and you would see the very best bits of human nature coming to the fore."
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She added: "People’s strength, decency, courage and compassion over and over again. That was the most incredibly life-affirming and humbling counterpoint to the terrible statistics cited on the news every evening.
"This was a pandemic for staff and patients that was lived through human beings and the human cost of COVID.”
Breathtaking is available to watch on ITVX. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide or take a look at the rest of our Drama coverage.
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