After arriving on Netflix at the end of August, Breathless has almost immediately acquired a major following. The show, which is in Spanish and is set in Spain, is a medical drama that focuses on some things that are often left unaddressed on medical TV shows. The show’s main characters are residents who join a hospital just as much of its staff go on strike over cuts to public health funding.
This leaves the show’s core cast in a moral dilemma as they’re forced to decide whether they want to continue supporting patients or support the striking workers, which would have deadly consequences. If you’re on the fence about watching Breathless either because of its language or for some other reason, here are three reasons you should make time for the series.
It doesn’t have any easy answers
Genuinely great medical dramas understand that, even as doctors work long hours and find themselves in incredibly stressful situations, there are plenty of things that come in between a doctor’s desire to treat people and them doing their job. There are layers of bureaucracy, and that reality is reflected on Breathless.
Spain’s health care system is different from the even more dysfunctional one that exists in the United States, but the show’s big question is whether it might be worth sacrificing immediate patient needs in order to fight for something greater. There are no right answers here, and as the show develops, you begin to understand why various characters align themselves where they do.
It still does most of the normal medical drama stuff
Although it has some pretty weighty moral questions attached to it, Breathless is also careful to give viewers much of what they might expect from a medical drama about young, hot doctors. There are relationships to consider, as well as the always compelling drama of trying to diagnose a patient and then save their lives.
Is the drama of patient treatment on Breathless as realistic as it is on some other shows? Maybe not, but the show knows how to deploy its stakes expertly, and it knows how to craft episodes that feel thematically whole in and of themselves.
It features a great ensemble cast
One of the best things about watching shows from other countries is that the cast is likely to be mostly new to you. Breathless is filled to the brim with great actors, and those actors are called upon to play a wide variety of different emotions over the course of the first season.
Thankfully, all of them prove to be up to the task. Without them, the moral dilemmas their characters face would not feel nearly as real as they actually wind up feeling. These actors might not be stars yet, but many of them feel destined for stardom one day.
Breathless season 1 is streaming on Netflix.
