Breath work
During the Covid pandemic, doctor-turned-actor Thom Petty returned to the hospital frontlines – and then used that experience to help shape the dialogue, setting and atmosphere on the set of ITV drama Breathtaking.
Thom Petty trained as a doctor before deciding to specialise in anaesthetics and intensive care – a role in which he worked for around eight years before deciding to retrain as an actor. But when the Covid pandemic arrived in the UK in March 2020, he decided to return to medicine full-time for several months.
“It was extraordinary in the suddenness of it. It all happened quite quickly,” Petty tells DQ. “Lockdown happened and we were all on a very compressed rota working in an anaesthetic intensive care unit, which doubled in capacity without doubling in space.”
In the wake of the pandemic, Petty returned to acting, as well as writing and directing his own projects and retaining some clinical work. Then when it came to ITV drama Breathtaking, he was able to lean on his experiences working on hospital wards at that time as both an actor (playing Dr Neil Westland) and as the three-parter’s lead medical advisor.
Written by a trio of current or former doctors – Rachel Clarke, Prasanna Puwanarajah and Jed Mercurio – the series is based on real experiences before and after the arrival of Covid-19 in the UK, following the impact of the pandemic through the eyes of acute medicine consultant Dr Abbey Henderson (Joanne Froggatt).
Petty joined the project, which is produced by HTM Television and directed by Craig Viveiros, early on in development and was able to provide information about his experiences alongside many other doctors who contributed. He was then “sucked into” the production, advising on the scripts as they came out and subsequently becoming the lead medical advisor during production and post-production.
“It’s very easy to take people out [of the story], particularly medical audiences,” he says. “That’s probably fine for a continuing drama – they’re a different beast that focuses on some medical storylines alongside the longer-term relationships between characters – whereas the situation [on Breathtaking] was so specific, it really drove the programme. So it had to be right. It was a hugely involved process.”
Reading the scripts, Petty would advise on some of the technical language or the treatments that might be used. But he often found the biggest task was getting the tone right between characters and their relationships with each other. “There is a peculiar culture in the NHS. There are lots of hierarchies, and getting that really embedded in the text was important,” he explains. “Rachel works in the NHS so she knows that absolutely. Prasanna used to work in the NHS, as did Jed many years ago. So it was really good already. It felt very true and natural. What we were often trying to do was just add that layer of specificity to March 2020.”
There were also complex ethical questions Petty had to consider alongside palliative care doctor Clarke, involving decisions about end-of-life care for certain characters.
“I had to deal with quite a lot of the intensive care storyline elements and just make sure we were dealing with those things really sensitively,” he continues. “Those decisions are hard and sometimes they might seem quite cruel and logical because they’re about essentially, ‘Has this patient got an end-of-life limiting illness here? Or is there a chance they could get better?’
“There are conversations between Jo Froggatt’s character and the intensive care consultant, and it was really important to feel like they were respectful, but also authentic because there will be people watching whose relatives sadly have died in hospital. We need them to understand what that process is and not portray something that’s overly dramatic or unrealistic, because that would be irresponsible.”
At the show’s fictional London hospital, which was built inside an old podiatry college in Belfast, Petty would often spend 10 or 11 hours a day on set to ensure the series was as authentic and realistic as possible.
Production designer Ashley Jeffers had already mapped out the hospital’s layout, and detailed everything from the scuffs on the walls to the types of posters that would be pinned up. Petty then offered his input in terms of what the intensive care ward might look like and the type of equipment that would be used – from the correct colour of the doctors’ scrub tops to the right style of telephone that would be used in the NHS – as well as differentiating between the ‘hot zones’ filled with Covid patients and the ‘cold zones’ where ‘normal’ hospital life continued as much as possible.
There also had to be enough empty space in each room in the beginning that could then be filled by additional beds or some of the 50 or 60 supporting artists that could be on set at one time.
Then before filming began, Petty led a boot camp for the actors, taking them through some of the show’s medical scenes and how they should be choreographed. In particular, he spoke to Froggatt about how her character Abbey might approach a patient, and the different tones of voice she might use when speaking to patients and colleagues.
“We also did some procedures examining the chest, and talked about how to use a stethoscope, just to try to embed the culture a little bit before we then moved on to going, “Right, episode one, the first Covid patient scene.’ I hope that really helped,” he says. “Jo was incredible because she absorbed so much. Then, once we were shooting, I would generally be on the monitors with Craig, just trying to fine-tune things that maybe didn’t quite look right, so that as much as possible what we shot was going to be medically accurate.
“There was another layer of medical spotting in post-production. I was involved in all the editor’s notes and giving notes on things. Where there might have been a bit of dodgy CPR in the background, that would be the place where I could say, ‘Look, I don’t think that’s a strong shot because the CPR doesn’t look quite real, so maybe we could use something else.’ It continued and continued, and we just tried to fine-tune those things.”
As an anaesthetist, Petty kept a close eye on how patients in the series were incubated, when breathing tubes are fed through a person’s mouth or nose and into their windpipe. Of course, this isn’t performed for real – short tubes and cutaway shots are used to hide the shortcuts – but on one occasion Petty stood in as a hand double to ensure the process looked as realistic as possible. Other practical things included closing the curtains around a patient’s bed when they were being examined, something that sometimes doesn’t happen on other medical dramas. “It was important to get that right,” Petty says.
Shooting the series largely in sequence, the biggest challenges on set were the major set pieces in the story, such as the first Covid patient coming in or other examination sequences that required lots of people to be talking to each other, often as a patient was moved through the hospital in a wheelchair or on a gurney.
The other difficult moments were those dealing with end-of-life issues, and speaking with the actors to ensure those scenes were performed with dignity and respect for the patient.
“It is a bit upsetting for people to have to think about that and do it, and even though people are doctors or actors, we’ve all had experience of Covid and may well have had things in our personal lives,” Petty says. “We had to approach that with a lot of care.”
While the Covid pandemic is still fresh in the minds of many viewers who will have watched Breathtaking when it first aired in February, Petty says the drama’s intention was always to portray the real experiences of medics working in hospitals during the time.
“It will be difficult for some people to approach it and watch it, and that’s fine. For some people, maybe this is the time almost four years on to open the lid on that and look at it,” he says. “It’s made with a huge amount of heart and authenticity at its centre. Its intention is absolutely to be representative, and how that is then received is up to people who watch it from whatever background or place they’re in.”
As the series reveals, shortages of PPE (personal protective equipment) and other issues were often in conflict with government guidelines and information being relayed to the public – “and that will shock people,” Petty notes. “The other thing about the series is it shows the humanity and humanness of the characters. It’s very realistic in terms of doctors and nurses who get affected by things and have kids and a husband at home who they’re worried about, older parents who are vulnerable or relatives who might not believe everything being said about Covid is true. That’s something that’s sometimes forgotten in the discourse. We’re all real people at the same time.”
tagged in: Breathtaking, HTM Television, ITV, Thom Petty