ITV viewers say they ‘can’t watch’ Covid drama as memories come ‘flooding back’

"It’s all flooding back like it was yesterday."

The three-part series, called Breathtaking, stars Joanne Froggatt as Dr Abbey Henderson.

Based off a novel of the same name written by real-life doctor Rachel Clarke, the first episode aired last night (February 19) and left viewers stunned.

Beginning in the pandemic's early days of 2020, when hospital beds were filling up by the day, and UK medics were growing uneasy following warnings from countries overseas and PPE limitations.

The show has been praised by viewers on social media for its 'powerful' portrayal of the realities hospital workers faced.

"15mins into watching #BREATHTAKING & it’s all flooding back like it was yesterday," one person penned. "Realising now that there’s probably a lot of it that I haven’t really processed. The most traumatising period of our professional lives made exponentially worse by the behaviour of the government."

"#BREATHTAKING again another brilliant drama from #ITV and I’m reliving those dark days," a second wrote online. "I was a hospital chaplain during the pandemic and held the hands of dying patients when families couldn’t. I saw people at their best and their worst, I cried with them and prayed for them."

A third wrote after viewing the episode: "I'm as angry now as I was then, seeing the staff with no PPE, Boris bragging that he was shaking hands with people who had covid. I remember going to work and it was carnage I've never seen anything like it, shelves were empty, people were angry and scared."

"#Breathtaking on@itv is as devastating as I expected. Too many decisions from higher up without listening to frontline staff," a fourth put.

All three episodes of Breathtaking are available to stream on ITVX now.