A new series, Respira, is coming to Netflix on August 30th. It is a gripping medical drama that intertwines the human stories of doctors and trainees and work difficulties, with a strong denunciation of the conditions of the Iberian public health system. The action takes place inside the Joaquin Sorolla hospital in Valencia, a polyclinic like many others in Europe, on the brink of collapse, with a medical director always struggling to make ends meet, the pressure of politics, the union struggle to defend the profession but above all the quality and possibility of providing a service to those who need it and, above all, the trenches of the ward and the operating room. Moving in this eternally emergency environment are young trainees and experienced doctors, with their stories, their doubts, their fragilities, their mistakes, without forgetting the inevitable intrigues and secrets. A truly gripping series, on par with the great titles that have made the history of this genre, starting with the inevitable touchstone, Grey’s Anathomy.
But how does the first season of Respira, the new Netflix medical series, end? We had the chance to preview the first four episodes of the series, and in this beginning of the story, the narration has a circular progression. At the end of the fourth episode, in fact, we discover how the operation we see three doctors from the Joaquin Sorolla hospital performing in the first scene goes: the resident Biel, and the medical experts Pilar and Nestor.
We meet them like this, while they are trying to help a patient, right at the beginning of a very important and very tough strike, called after a tragic event that has once again highlighted how the lack of funds, the shortage of personnel and the grueling shifts are not problems only for healthcare personnel, but situations that affect the right to health of all citizens.
In the last episode we discover that the patient “under the knife” in that very uncomfortable situation is certainly not just any patient, but is tied by a personal thread to Biel and, above all, is tied to the reason for the protest and the strike that puts the operation she needs to save her life at risk. What happens in the operating room calls into question everything not only for the Sorolla hospital, but for all health facilities in the region of Valencia.
An ending that is actually a beginning, because Respira will certainly not stop at a first season, as it is written and created as a perfect long-running series and therefore we can say with certainty that we are only at the beginning of the adventures of the doctors of Joaquin Sorolla that will surely captivate audiences around the world.
