ITV axes 60s medical drama Breathless

By Patrick McLennan
( What's on TV )
published

Breathless star Zoe Boyle has let slip that the ITV medical drama has been axed after just one series.

Co-starring Jack Davenport as a dashing doctor, the series was set in a London hospital in the 1960s, charting the working and personal lives of the doctors and nurses, channelling a Mad Men meets Call The Midwife vibe.

Zoe - who played nurse Jean Truscott - told the Radio Times: "No series two, unfortunately. It's fine. It's absolutely fine. It's sometimes nice to just leave it as one little brief moment in time and not drag it out.

"I loved the part and I loved the script and the show as a whole."

Breathless launched last autumn on Thursday evenings to viewing figures of 4.4 million. But by the end of the six-part series its audience had fallen to 2.1 million.

 

Patrick McLennan
Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.