Stream It Or Skip It: 'Breathless' on Netflix, a medical drama about a public hospital in Spain that's about to go on strike (2024)

If there’s a TV genre that’s gotten pretty stale over the years, it’s the medical show. It just seems like there isn’t a hell of a lot of leeway with what can be done on such shows. You have pretty, horny doctors and nurses; crazy cases that test the doctors’ abilities; doctors who constantly rail against authority…. rinse and repeat. A new Netflix series from Spain throws a potential strike into the mix, but it’s not as intriguing a factor as it may seem.

BREATHLESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A medical resident named Biel (Manu Ríos) is awakened by another resident, Quique (Xoán Fórneas); Biel’s patient is getting operated on and Biel overslept.

The Gist: The patient is having a tumor removed in her breast in the late-night surgery. The doctor doing the surgery, Pilar (Aitana Sánchez-Gijon), is trying her best to get to the tumor, but she’s up against a heck of a deadline: At midnight, the entire staff of the Joaquín Sorolla Public Hospital in Valencia will go on strike, including the doctors. The oncologist that’s in the operating room, Néstor Noa (Borja Luna), the person who spearheaded the strike, tells Pilar that she needs to close up, but Pilar refuses; she won’t let politics get in the way of the oath she and every one of the other doctors took.

Flash back two months; Biel encounters Néstor at a market, trying to convince the wife of the fishmonger to come in and have the lump in her breast examined. At the hospital, Biel is called on to see a patient who caused a car accident; he happens to know the very recognizable woman. She’s Patricia Segura (Najwa Nimri), the president of the Valencian government. She wishes she wasn’t in a public hospital, but it was the closest one. Upon an examination — Patricia, who is a bit drunk and was given a lorazepam, guides his hands for him — Biel feels lumps in her breast.

Another resident, Rodrigo (Víctor Sáinz), is accosted by a mother whose 8-year-old daughter has problems breathing. He has to be bailed out by Jésica (Blanca Suárez), an attending physician who is also his older sister. She doesn’t think he has what it takes to work in a big hospital, but Rodri is a talented diagnostician. However, when he suggests that the girl might not be eating, the mother gets offended and leaves.

An OD patient is brought into the ER, accompanied by an obviously high Quique. Rocio (Macarena de Rueda), the ER attending, eventually sends Quique home after he gives the kid adrenaline even though he was in V-fib, and says that she won’t mention he was there.

After Néstor has to tell the fishmonger’s wife that her cancer is terminal, he decries to Pilar and whoever else will listen how public hospitals are buckling under budgetary strains. This is when he broaches the idea of a strike for the first time. Pilar has doubts that will ever come to pass, but she’s interrupted by a call; the OD patient that Quique brought in is her son.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Pick a medical drama and it’ll be comparable to Breathless: Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, The Resident, New Amsterdam, The Good Doctor, ER, etc.

Our Take: Breathless, created by Carlos Montero, is a pretty standard medical drama. Overworked, pretty young interns full of quips, attending physicians who are equally pretty and full of arrogance over their ability to play god with people’s lives, disrespected nurses, irritated administrators…. it’s all in this show.

The prospect of a strike, and the fact that Néstor, one of Spain’s top oncologists, is spearheading it, adds a bit of interest to the series. But Néstor’s character is a pretty typical iconoclastic doctor character who chafes against the status quo. He’s a Spanish Doug Ross, to be honest, and it seems that since ER there has been at least one character like that in a medical series.

But much of the season is going to take place in the lead-up to the strike, and here we’ll see most of the usual stuff. Jésica has an inappropriate sexual dalliance with Biel. May (Marwa Bakhat) is working a resident’s long hours despite being pregnant. Rodrigo makes a mistake during a surgery that will likely derail his career. It all elicits a shrug from us at this point.

Patricia’s breast cancer case will be a season through-line, but because we’re not particularly versed in Spanish politics, especially in a semi-autonomous region like Valencia, some of the impact of that storyline will likely be lost on us. We guess most non-Spanish viewers will have a similar issue with trying to figure out just how significant a figure Patricia is. But her character is certainly one of the more interesting on the show, and having a high-level politician as a public hospital patient surely will help Néstor in his efforts to get his grievances heard.

Sex and Skin: There’s some sex, especially between Jésica and Biel, and some medical-related nudity, but it’s fleeting.

Parting Shot: After botching a procedure that costs a patient their lives, Rodrigo screams in anguish.

Sleeper Star: We’ll cite Alfonso Bassave as Lluis, the officious hospital administrator, and Blanca Martínez as the underappreciated ER nurse Blanca.

Most Pilot-y Line: After having sex in the back room of a karaoke bar, Biel tells Jésica to trust her brother Rodrigo more. “He doesn’t have to be a clone of you to be a good doctor.” The man isn’t very good at pillow talk, is he?

Our Call: STREAM IT. While we’re generally ho-hum about Breathless, there’s nothing particularly wrong with the show. It’s entertaining enough to watch while doing other things, especially if you turn on the English dub. But it’s nothing we haven’t seen dozens of times before.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.