Breathless Series Review: Netflix’s Medical Drama Between Soap Opera and Reality!
Cast: Najwa Nimri, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Blanca Suárez, Manu Ríos, Abril Zamora, Alfonso Bassave, Ana Rayo, Xoán Fórneas, Blanca Martínez, Borja Luna
Director: Marta Font Pascual, David Pinillos
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
From the creator of Elite, the series Breathless arrives on Netflix on August 30, a medical drama starring several well-known faces of Hispanic series on the streaming platform, starting with Mau Rios, already seen in Elite and who here plays the specialist Biel De Felipe, continuing with Najwa Nimri who was already the implacable Alicia Sierra in La Casa di Carta. Responsible for the fate of the Joaquin Sorolla hospital in Valencia is the medical director Luis (Alfonso Bassave), the cast also includes Blanca Suarez, in the role of Dr. Jessica Donoso, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon who plays the inflexible and very strict Dr. Pilar Amaro and Borja Luna who plays the role of the esteemed oncologist (and unionist) Nestor Moa.
Carlos Montero (already creator of Élite and Chaos After You) signs as creator, screenwriter, and producer of the Spanish medical drama Breathless, available on Netflix with 8 episodes of the first season and with Manu Ríos of Élite among the protagonists. Breathless is a classic medical drama that combines the portrayal of the plight of patients and staff at the Joaquin Sorolla Hospital in Valencia with an important message about the conditions in which public health workers are forced to work, as happens in reality in several European countries. Breathless is a hyper-pop and contemporary medical drama that thinks more about social media than the plot and has all the merits and defects of Spanish seriality. As with Kaos, seeing who created it says a lot about the nature of the series: Breathless is by Carlos Montero who has created a lot of contemporary Spanish seriality on Netflix such as Elite, To All the Boys We Fall in Love, Chaos After You, Feria the Darkest Light.
Breathless Series Review: The Story Plot
The first scene of Breathless already projects us into a high-tension scenario, in the middle of a surgical team that is operating on a patient while outside protests are taking place to ask for more funds and tools for a collapsing public health system. When midnight strikes and the day begins on which a total strike has been called, in the operating room the doctors are faced with a terrible choice, continue or stop and postpone joining the fight to support a system that must save thousands of patients every day? While their hands are still working, the clash of principles and conscience is very hard. Then the direction cuts and takes us months earlier, to tell us about the dramatic events that led to that difficult choice that hangs over the surgeons in the first scene. We thus get to know the characters and discover that the boy we glimpse under the mask in the operating room is Biel, a young specialist with the dream of becoming a doctor.
A dream shared with three other boys, like the apartment where they live and the place where they put themselves to the test every day: the Joaquin Sorolla Hospital in Valencia. Following Biel, we soon get to know the older doctors: the brilliant oncologist and trade unionist) Nestor Moa, the very strict doctor Pilar who everyone fears, and the young but already experienced Jessica, the older sister of one of the specialists, Rodrigo, who suffers when compared to her. At the head of the hospital structure, we find Luis who, as medical director, is more worried about the accounts that never add up than by the possibility of helping as many people as possible, and he too, like the others, has a life in which there is no shortage of drama and secrets.
Breathless Series Review and Analysis
It is a series that will enthrall the public, Breathless, the Spanish medical drama that Netflix has launched, rightly, as an Iberian Grey’s Anatomy. The elements that have led to the success of the most successful medical series, from the days of ER onwards, are all there. Complex and realistic characters, told in their lives absorbed by a job of great responsibility and that often drains the existence of those who dedicate themselves to it, and their private, complex, intricate, passionate, human stories, certainly not made of ideal perfection but of flaws, problems, stumbles, secrets, and dramas. In Breathless, however, the continuous denunciation of the problems of public health, in Spain, as in many other European systems, is also very striking. From the very first scene, the central theme, the question that torments the doctors of the Sorolla hospital in Valencia is whether to fight to save what remains of a sacrosanct right to health or to cling to the Hippocratic oath applied only to perennial emergencies and everyday life, avoiding raising one’s voice and remaining silent in the face of the destruction of a system that can no longer guarantee the rights of the weakest.
And this conviction and sincerity in recounting the disaster in which doctors, paramedics, and patients in need of help are forced to move, who cannot receive it in the ways and times they need it, due to reckless choices, is the surprising part and one that one would not expect to see in a series that, cared for in the smallest details and capable of captivating the viewer right from the start, would fall into a pattern that great seriality has already drawn on successfully. This choice to strongly anchor the story to reality is what makes Breathless appear to be a dramatically current series and a narration that finds, in a now classic scheme, a new and disruptive element that does not remain only as a background but pushes the action and becomes decisive in the development of the stories told. For the rest, Breathless makes use of captivating writing, interesting stories and characters, and a very well-calibrated cast and has all the credentials to enthuse (today and for a long time to come) TV series audiences as much as other successful and now historic medical dramas have managed to do.
On the one hand, it’s really too much: too many forced passages, too many “coincidences”, and too many personal dramas that unite work and private life. You get the impression of being overwhelmed by the frenzy and the narrative plot to the point of feeling disoriented. On the other hand, however, Breathless captures your attention without pauses – often you really should “Breathless“, even when you don’t have the time, like in the middle of a surgical operation. The narrative is filled with totally unrealistic events. Anyone who works in a public hospital knows how overworked doctors are, forced to work grueling shifts, underpaid, and underestimated. From here to interweaving so many stories that, by chance, involve those who work at the hospital in Valencia, starting with the President, there is a long way to go.
If you take any successful medical drama, from the masterpiece of the genre ER to Grey’s Anatomy, through Dr. House and Nurse Jackie, you will notice that the sensitive topics that concern the lives of patients and staff are introduced little by little. Maximum two/three at the same time. In Breathless, already in the first episode, we have the union issue, political-economic, and the casual discovery of a delicate cancer that significantly concerns prevention, not to mention all the other tragic events that will lead to the strike whose existence is revealed to us from the beginning of this story. For all these reasons, Breathless seems like too much to follow and believe. And yet… And yet they, the interpreters, are really good. In incredible situations, they are the ones who are credible.
Thanks to that sense of human drama that is a must in hospital series, a source of great empathy, and that private dimension that doctors and nurses bring to the workplace, giving priority to patients, Breathless does its job. It pays homage to both ER (right with the beginning of the pilot episode, taking up the first moments of the best medical drama in history) Grey’s Anatomy, and many other series. I won’t insert spoilers, but you will easily recognize the quotes if you have followed the series that are being honored. And those that are less honored and used more as “sources”: in Breathless a lot has already been seen, from the point of view of medical crises, but the European version of stories usually made in the USA is still quite interesting, given the diversity of protocols and laws. Not to mention the public health system versus the American health system, which has been told for many years by the series through the discomfort of patients without insurance and doctors forced to refuse them treatment.
Created by Carlos Montero, the father of Elite and Physics or Chemistry (one of the most popular Spanish teen dramas), Breathless does not owe its identity only to the previous influence of Grey’s Anatomy but also to that of The Resident – which will soon arrive on Netflix with all its seasons. Also in this case, in fact, precisely because of the storyline of two characters (including one prominent in the Valencian community) that intertwine with those of all the others, the criticism of the Spanish public health system and its close relationship with politics emerges. The desire to privatize some structures to the detriment of others, the problems of state funding and balancing the budget, and the impossible bureaucracy that slows down any attempt at improvement, are all elements that The Resident already used to expose the rottenness and contradictions of the American health system.
The story of one of the specialists, which is another type of denunciation of the limping Spanish health system, is very reminiscent of what happened in the FOX medical drama. The clashes and strikes not only anchor the story to reality, although they often require a good dose of suspension of disbelief from the viewer, but they also make the cases that doctors and nurses have to deal with doubly complicated. All the talk so far about Breathless, however, raises an inevitable question: not that we needed it, but it is the definitive proof that the streaming platform has become a generalist TV, after the procedures proposed in recent times. A container for all tastes and all ages, for the whole family and all schedules, even if the concept of schedule has definitively eradicated it at its birth. Who knows why they didn’t publish it at least in two parts.
The series lives on protagonists who are too beautiful to be so talented, but who at the same time are accepted precisely for their charismatic charm, as for the escapades in the hospital rooms and the races through the stairs and corridors. A characterization that is solid and captivating from the start, just like their interpreters, sometimes exasperated as the Spanish are used to doing, but who do not suffer from the excessively teen side of the first seasons of Grey’s Anatomy or the creator’s previous works. But we wonder why Netflix was involved in the making of a series like this, even though the production side certainly helped on an economic and staging level. So much so that binge-watching is perhaps not the most correct use for a product that could have easily aired on a generalist channel with a weekly appointment. And every week we wonder what would have happened to our new medical “heroes” to whom we already feel quite fond.
Breathless Series Review: The Last Words
Breathless is a medical drama that we already feel addicted to after watching four episodes, even though we wonder why we are not following it on any generalist TV with an episode a week. The protagonist’s work, their charisma, and their relationships, the writing that does not get lost in chatter (but perhaps goes a little too fast) and that looks at current events, between themes to be addressed, and the frenetic editing typical of procedurals. The criticism of the Spanish public health system is the added value and the icing on the cake. Breathless is the Spanish medical drama on Netflix that with its first season in 8 episodes and a strong final cliffhanger (already seen in ER) leaves us hoping to see a second cycle, especially in its homeland where the series has been a great success. Although many situations are unlikely, the talent of the cast makes up for it by making us fond of the characters, even the most inconsistent ones. In a series that triumphs in the “already seen” for medical cases.
Breathless Series Review: Netflix's Medical Drama Between Soap Opera and Reality! - Filmyhype
Director: Marta Font Pascual, David Pinillos
Date Created: 2024-08-29 18:49
3.5
Pros
- The characterization of the characters and the beginning in medias res.
- Social denunciation alongside romance between colleagues and hospital patients.
- The current issues and the non-trivial inclusiveness of the protagonists.
Cons
- It's a series perfect for a weekly appointment, rather than for binge watching.
- It has a deeply generalist imprint, which is not a flaw, but leaves one perplexed about the identity now abandoned since the beginning of the streaming service.
- It asks a good deal of suspension of disbelief from its viewers, and to keep up with several storylines.
