Breathtaking on ITV1 is a hard-hitting dramatisation of how NHS medics coped during the Covid-19 pandemic – but is Joanne Froggatt‘s character Dr Abbey Henderson a real person?
The series joins acute medicine consultant Dr Abbey Henderson and her team weeks before the UK’s first national lockdown. Heart-wrenching scenes show their struggle with the first wave of Covid-19 patients.
Running out of PPE, staff, and beds, Abbey is forced to make difficult healthcare decisions as her colleagues begin to be infected with Covid-19.
When the Tory government finally imposed a lockdown, the pandemic stretches Abbey and the team to their limits. Viewers will watch in horror as Abbey and the staff confront government policy in relation to care home discharges and inadequate PPE.
So is Abbey Henderson in Breathtaking a real person? And who is Rachel Clarke? Here’s everything you need to know…
Is Abbey Henderson real in Breathtaking?
Breathtaking concentrates on the first hand experiences of Acute General Medicine Doctor Abbey Henderson, played by Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt.
Dr Abbey Henderson is NOT a real person. However, her experiences are based in fact.
At the beginning of Breathtaking on ITV, we’re told: “This story is based on real experiences of National Health Service staff and patients during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The hospital and characters have been created for dramatic purposes.”
So while the characters are fictional, the stories are sadly all-too true. Writer Rachel Clarke is keen to point out that the character of Dr Abbey Henderson is not her.
Joanne Froggatt told ED!: “Abbey is based on both Rachel’s experiences during the pandemic, but also those of many other doctors and nurses. She is a fictional character with many different stories incorporated into one person. But every scenario in the script is based on reality. Every patient’s story is based on something that happened somewhere in the UK. That was an incredibly grounding experience.”
Who is Rachel Clarke?
Breathtaking is based on the book of the same name by Rachel Clarke, released in January 2021. The three part series has been adapted for television by Rachel, and former doctors Jed Mercurio, and Prasanna Puwanarajah.
The drama stars Joanne Froggatt in the role of a frontline hospital consultant – and all accounts are based on doctor-writer Rachel Clarke’s unflinching personal memoir of the greatest public health crisis in living memory.
Dr Rachel Clarke, who wrote and executive produced the series, came from a medical family (her father was a GP) and found the career path fascinating.
She “loved being at medical school to bits” and later “wanted the patient to feel as though they were the only thing that mattered to me”. Rachel was working in a hospice as a palliative care doctor when Covid-19 arrived.
She says: “As the pandemic unfolded, I knew from very early on when those awful haunting images started to appear from China and then from Northern Italy that this virus was going to have a catastrophic effect in the UK.”
Rachel asked if she could move out of the hospice sector into a hospital setting where “ward after ward after ward was filled with patients dying from Covid”. She adds: “The book Breathtaking is about my own personal experiences and those of others I interviewed in my hospital trust.”
Were Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah doctors?
As well as Rachel Clarke, both Line of Duty creator Jed Mecurio and Payback actor Prasanna Puwanarajah were medics before moving into TV.
In fact, co-writers Prasanna Puwanarajah and Rachel Clarke have known each other for nearly 20 years. When she was a medical student in Oxford, he was a very junior doctor in his first year of training as a doctor.
Rachel and Prasanna met in the same little medical firm and he taught her how to give people injections. She describes him as “this incredibly kind, enthusiastic and very committed young doctor who I looked up to then”.
She adds: “Ironically enough he left medicine soon afterwards but our paths crossed again with both of us having moved into more artistic areas of work as well as performing medicine in my case.”
Meanwhile, Lancashire-born Jed Mercurio practiced as a hospital doctor for three years. He later ventured into writing and penned the BBC medical drama Cardiac Arrest under the pseudonym John MacUre.
Is Abbey Henderson real in Breathtaking? How many healthcare workers died during the Covid pandemic?
The Office for National Statistics recorded 414 healthcare workers died of Covid-19 from March to December 2020.
In 2021, an estimated 60,000 NHS staff reported symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress due to their work in the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is not yet known how many doctors died by suicide during those years.
Read more: Breathtaking star Joanne Froggatt found love again after painful divorce
Breathtaking airs on consecutive nights from Monday, February 19, 2024 at 9pm on ITV1.
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