Before working in TV drama as a writer, producer and director you had a job in the NHS?

I was a junior hospital doctor from 1991 to 1994 and worked in acute medicine in the West Midlands. Breathtaking is a return to making medical drama for me. I’ve been involved in three before: Cardiac Arrest, Bodies and Critical. And having spent a lot of time in the thriller genre, with things like Line of Duty and Bodyguard, it’s a bit of a homecoming for me. It’s good that I’m working with people who have more recent experience of the NHS. But my own primary experience of working in the NHS in the 1990s has informed a lot of my writing.

At the start of the pandemic in 2020 I went to the NHS website to see what the needs were and what the requirement was to return. And someone who had been out of medicine as long as I had been was certainly not what they were looking for. But it was great that so many people did step up.

What story did you want to tell?

It’s really a story about the sacrifice the dedicated NHS staff made and we were very keen to use real events to inspire the drama. So it’s meticulously researched and those real experiences have been dramatised so they are centred around our fictional characters in a fictional hospital which is all designed to represent, as much as possible, the overall NHS experience.

You use real life footage of government press conferences set against what is happening in the hospital at the same time. Why?

The real life footage gives context. The story takes place over a period of time and when you are within a hospital environment it will certainly appear to the audience that every day and every night look the same. So placing the events within the context of outside developments across the pandemic story is, we think, really helpful for the audience to understand the evolving experience of the NHS during that time.

The main objective of the drama is to show the untold story. There have been accounts that have come out of the NHS experience, such as Rachel’s book and others. But there hasn’t been a TV drama that showed what was going on inside the hospitals at the time of the pandemic. So our goal was to lift the lid on that and show people the incredible sacrifice that NHS staff made during that time.

The drama reflects the impossible choices doctors had to make during the pandemic?

In Breathtaking we don’t shy away from showing the difficult dilemmas that ended up landing at the door of NHS staff. It was an unprecedented time of pressure on medical care in the UK and the NHS was facing an extraordinary challenge. Breathtaking shows how medical staff dedicated themselves to rising to that challenge.

Breathtaking attempts to dramatise the real experiences of NHS staff during the pandemic. They faced the evolving issue of the infection and the developing understanding of what Covid-19 would mean for patients. There was also the question of the measures that existed in respect of pandemic preparedness.

What we show in the drama is the incredible dedication of the staff coping with some of the periods of time during the pandemic when policy was evolving and people were trying to catch up with the virus. There’s a line in the first episode about the virus being ahead and that is something I think we portray very clearly in the drama. The audience will really feel for our hospital staff as they are struggling to figure out how best to cope with the situation as it snowballs.

What about the physical and mental impact on NHS staff?

The drama portrays the mental and emotional stress on NHS staff during the pandemic. That contextualises their heroism. The sacrifices that staff made, the endeavours they continued to make and continue to make to this day are amply demonstrated in their actions during the drama. Some lost their lives while others now suffer from Long Covid.

NHS staff also faced abuse. For example, Rachel Clarke has commentated on medical issues all through the pandemic and as a result of that she has experienced abuse via social media and sometimes through mainstream media. So it’s really unfortunate and stressful for her to go through that.

We also see the the pandemic through the eyes of other characters, including final year medical student Emma, played by Donna Banya?

Emma is a final year medical student who over the course of the three episodes takes on more medical responsibilities as she progresses into serving as a frontline NHS junior doctor. Her character represents the incredible sacrifice that medical students were called upon to make. The ones who were right at the end of their medical training were brought into the frontline and it was a real baptism of fire for those young people.

We also reflect the diverse nature of the NHS which, like a lot of medical services all over the world, is multinational and multicultural. Medicine has always been a profession with a very strong component of internationalism in terms of developing your skills and training. And the NHS is no different. We are very clear on depicting that in Breathtaking. We see the huge diversity of NHS medical staff in contemporary Britain and we are really grateful to our brilliant diverse cast for helping us portray that.

Where did you film?

We were lucky to have access to a disused block of Ulster University in Belfast which has been the shell in which we built our hospital sets. Our emergency department, intensive care unit, wards, corridors and so on. It looks absolutely fabulous and our production designer Ashleigh Jeffers has done an incredible job with his team in creating a totally authentic environment for the drama to take place.

It is challenging and emotional material to film. But it’s a tribute to the incredible dedication of the NHS staff. We felt we needed to go on that journey with these characters so the audience would appreciate what had actually happened in the NHS. Most people in this country have a very high opinion of our NHS staff and they are incredibly grateful for the service they gave. We are extremely hopeful that this drama will cement that position in the audience’s mind. That the British people will see close up what NHS staff went through during the Covid-19 pandemic.

You took a decision to film medical procedures in real time as they would happen. Why?

We want to represent as far as possible the authentic experience of NHS staff. That also entails being as accurate as possible in terms of the depiction of medical procedures. It’s not a gory show. But it’s important that any NHS staff watching will recognise the reality of their own world as it’s being portrayed in this drama.

We’ve got a brilliant team of medical advisors who have made an extraordinary contribution to helping us achieve that level of authenticity that is so important to the look and feel of the drama. So the watching audience should be reassured that what they are seeing is representative of real life experience in the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our ambition with Breathaking is to make things feel as authentic as possible so that the audience has an immersive journey through the experience of NHS staff, patients and their families during the Covid-19 pandemic. We really feel that’s the only way the mass audience might gain an insight into the incredible sacrifices and dedication of NHS staff during that period.

Some people may say the last thing they want to see on TV is a reminder of the pandemic. Why should they watch Breathtaking?

Breathtaking is a drama about the incredible dedication and sacrifices that NHS staff made during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s part of our recent history and our relationship with one of our most treasured institutions. I would hope that the mass audience would want to find out more about how NHS staff dedicated themselves to saving lives and bringing kindness and humanity into patient care during the biggest public health challenge this country has experienced in our lifetimes.
It’s a very involving story. We know the audience will engage with these characters who are at the frontline facing up to incredible challenges during the pandemic. And that is something that is both heroic and incredibly stressful for those characters. So it’s a really emotional journey for the audience.

There are still ongoing ramifications from the Covid-19 pandemic in our health service and the fact is that Covid is still active in our health care system and has to be part of our experience still. It’s only four years since the pandemic hit and it still feels very fresh and relevant.

Breathtaking airs at 9pm on Monday 19th, Tuesday 20th, Wednesday 21st February on ITV1 and ITVX as well as STV and STV player.