PBS, ITV team up for 60's medical drama, 'Breathless'
ITV Studios and MASTERPIECE on PBS/WGBH have announced a co-production agreement for Breathless, a stylish and compelling 60’s medical drama series set in London. The six, one-hour episodes will star Jack Davenport (Smash, Pirates of the Caribbean, Coupling) as a brilliant surgeon who believes he can truly make a difference in womens’ lives.
Breathless will follow the lives of a group of doctors and nurses working in a London hospital, a world in which everything and everyone has their place. But, as you can imagine, underneath is a veneer filled with lies and guilty secrets, driven by love, ambition and sex. Other cast members include Zoe Boyle (Downton Abbey) and Iain Glen (Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones) and Natasha Littlefield (Any Human Heart, Case Histories).
According to the press release, Breathless opens in 1961, a time when Britain was on the brink of the ’60s revolution where abortion is illegal and the contraceptive pill is only just available to married women. Set in and around a busy gynecology unit, medicine becomes the perfect stage to play out the shifting and complex moral codes of early 1960s society.
The series is co-created and written by Paul Unwin (Shameless, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Poirot), who will also direct the first two episodes of the series.
Given the recent drama success rate on ITV, PBS and the BBC with the likes of Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Call the Midwife, Endeavour, Poirot, Inspector Lewis, Mr. Selfridge, Paradise and Wallander this is another one to clear out some space for on the DVR.
