‘Line of Responsibility’s Jed Mercurio Creating Pandemic Drama ‘Breathtaking’

Prasanna Puwanarajah, who stars as Martin Bashir on season 5 of “The Crown,” is working once more with “Line of Responsibility” creator Jed Mercurio, this time on an adaptation of Rachel Clarke’s pandemic-themed bestseller “Breathtaking.”

The e book is being developed as a three-part as-yet-untitled drama for U.Okay. broadcaster ITV, Puwanarajah, who was previously a health care provider with the U.Okay.’s Nationwide Well being Service (NHS), as was Mercurio, instructed Selection. Clarke is writing the drama with Puwanarajah and Mercurio.

Set in the course of the time when the U.Okay. was being ravaged by COVID-19, Clarke’s e book supplies an insider’s take a look at the pandemic from a hospital physician’s perspective.

“Rachel Clarke is a palliative care physician who I used to work with within the NHS, once I was a primary yr junior physician and he or she was a medical scholar – I taught her methods to do IV drip traces. And he or she’s now an unbelievable statesperson for the NHS and advocate for NHS employees and sufferers,” Puwanarajah stated.

“It’s trying on the the lives of healthcare professionals within the first few months of the pandemic,” Puwanarajah stated. “I’m very eager to get what I feel is a extremely necessary piece of public curiosity drama out into the world. As a result of, we’ve been dwelling by robust instances, and you will need to problem the shifting panorama of fact that we’re instructed and to push again in opposition to that with info and details primarily based on witnessed occasions. It’s one thing that’s actually necessary to me.”

Mercurio and Puwanarajah beforehand collaborated on graphic novel “Sleeper,” the place the worlds of science fiction, conspiracy thriller and Westerns collide. Puwanarajah additionally starred in Mercurio’s Sky medical drama “Crucial” and is presently filming ITV crime drama “Payback,” which is govt produced by Mercurio.