Series based on real events, whether they are in documentary form or opt for dramatization, often incur in what we could call an information defect. In other words, the accumulation of data takes precedence, after metabolizing huge amounts of information to make it accessible to viewers, and the notion of storytelling is lost sight of. In other words, what is told is more important than how it is told.
To prevent this from happening, it is almost always beneficial to ask ourselves what the underlying theme is in the story we want to develop, what we want to explain with it or what issues that, to a greater or lesser extent, affect us, we want to reflect on. All of this can be suggested by the story itself, or the authors can use the plot to raise questions of interest to them.
If we think, for example, about The Asunta case (Ramón Campos, Jon de la Cuesta, Gema R. Neira, David Orea Arribas, 2024) the entire discourse around fatherhood/motherhood that could be deduced from the relationship of the ill-fated girl with her parents is expanded by delving into the different types of parent-child relationships that the rest of the characters embody.
Let this brief preamble serve as an introduction to Breathtakingthe three-episode miniseries released by Filmin on the 27th in which the consequences of a pandemic that now seems as far away as the First World War.
The story is based on the novel of the same name by Rachel Clarke in which she recounts her experiences during the first wave of COVID-19. Clarke also appears as one of the three credited screenwriters. The other two are the normally actor Prasanna Puwanarajah and none other than Jed Mercurio. Yes, the creator of Line of Duty.
Before going into how Mercury’s personality influences the development of the story, let’s go back to what we discussed at the beginning of this text. Breathtaking could have been limited to telling what happened in that hospital during the different phases of the coronavirus’ evolution, however, from the very first images, the creators’ position and their reflective interest are very different. A militancy that, by the way, can irritate part of the audience, but this is not Family doctor and the scriptwriters have not come to make friends.
It all starts with a parallel montage that combines archive images in which we see and hear the interventions of different political leaders regarding the start of the pandemic, combined with the fictionalization of the cruel daily life that health workers had to face from March 2020 until well into 2021.
This structure will be maintained throughout the three episodes, each of them focusing, more or less, on each of the different viral waves that shook British society just four years ago. A clear and forceful discourse is thus established. On the dissociation between reality and political actionthis last daughter of calculation, intoxicated by economic indicators, totally and absolutely oblivious to the truth that was suffocating health centres.
This position not only represents a frontal criticism of the management of both Boris Johnson’s government and the National Health Service (NHS), but also opens a deep debate on various issues of great relevance. Let’s focus on a couple:
1-NHS control of information, which did not allow any doctor to make statements, led to an obscurantist practice that, on the one hand, rewarded misinformation and generated uncertainty among the population and, on the other, caused social networks to be filled with fake news disseminated through the social media (the pandemic does not exist, hospitals are empty, vaccines and doctors are killing us) that filled the information vacuum created by the authorities themselves.
2-The application of health protocols designed from the offices where power is stored, totally alien to the reality of hospitals. Inviolable protocols that forced doctors to decide who lived and who died, since the collapse of the centres and the preference given to those affected by coronavirus meant that, for example, a cancer patient could not be operated on because there was no space in the ICU for him. His bed was occupied, by decree, by a COVID patient who was not necessarily seriously ill.
Beyond the rhythm that Jed Mercurio prints on all his works, here heightened by the permanent urgency in which all the protagonists live immersed, Breathtaking It accumulates countless valuable details to become, on its own merits, the definitive audiovisual work on the pandemic.
When many directors were asked about the possibility of telling stories that narrated the ravages caused by COVID, most said that the widespread use of masks would be a major setback, as it limited the expressiveness of the actors, with half their faces hidden behind the green or white fabric, depending on the model.
To counteract the FFP3 effect, Breathtaking masterfully uses the foregroundThe series begins by highlighting the importance of masks, with Dr. Abbey Henderson (Joanne Froggatt) trying on one that doesn’t fit, and will emphasize her importance when they really become essential. By the way, the choice of a central character around whom the story pivots and who functions as a metonym for the global situation avoids dispersion and gives greater force to both the story and the discourse.
Beyond successfully exploiting the resources of any contemporary health fiction – hand-held camera, proximity to the characters, placing the viewer at the centre of the drama, meticulous sound design – this production for ITV skillfully handles the concept of distance.
Knows how to insert firsts (and very firsts) Close-ups when you need to convey emotions through the eyes of doctorspatients or relatives, but also knows how to distance itself when it comes to showing the imposition of those ‘safety spaces’ established by law to avoid contagion. For example, the use of panoramic shots instead of shots/reverse shots that establish that path between faces delimited by the so-called ‘minimum safety distance’ or the use of the general shot in the conversation between Abbey and her resident Emma (Donna Banya) when they are outside the hospital.
Let us point out two examples regarding the work with inserts. The first has to do with the aforementioned masks. In addition to insisting, right from the start, on their importance as a preventive instrument, they are also given a metaphorical potential.
If we draw a parallel between the beginning, with Abbey ‘covering’ her mouth, and the end, with those extreme close-ups of the doctor’s lips as she reveals the whole truth on the radio, we will read the masks as a synonym for gag, as a metaphor for that (false) dichotomy established between security (the protective mask) versus freedom (the muzzle mask), a rhyme built on the basis of inserts.
The other example is found in the second episode, when Dr. Ozkul (Philip Arditti) brings his violin to the hospital to play for a seriously ill patient who can barely look after himself. Patients who, let us remember, were not allowed to receive visitors, condemned to face death alone, without any palliative to mitigate their helplessness.
With the doctor’s face covered by the usual mask, and the patient rendered mute by a virus that has devoured his lungs, the communication of feelings can only be completed through touch, as the man can barely open his eyes. A combination of close-ups of both of their hands, and the gestures that accompany them, will serve to open the tap of emotions.
And that’s another point in favor of Breathtakingits ability to bring out feelings without having to reload the soundtrack, always avoiding showing the suffering of the victims, the mourners modestly hidden on the other end of the telephone line or preserving their dignity in the waiting room off-screen.
The series is extremely respectful of both the victims and their families, but above all, it is a recognition of the work of the health personnel who, paradoxically, gave up their health so that the world could move forward. It would be worth remembering this from time to time.