Treatment - first episode Learning to Breathe is a provoking portrayal of gender politics in the 1980's when the UK, caught up with high drama of riots, bombings and privatisation, was looking the other way. This ambitious, character-driven drama offers fresh insights into the personal politics of the 1980s and the issues which affected women on a very private level. Winter, 1981. Against the backdrop of Thatcher’s ironclad Britain, an unlikely group of women are brought together in a story of loyalty, friendship and survival. Meryl - feisty, independent and living on a shoestring - meets Anita, passive, devoted housewife, cushioned by her middle class lifestyle. Both pregnant, they meet at the new NHS antenatal classes. Jane, 'Queen of the Mother Hens', has also been dragged to the classes and leads the contingent of moneyed, conservative women who would otherwise never mix with anyone beyond their clique. In a poky classroom, amid breathing lessons and labour plans, a deeply divided society is revealed. The group's teacher Sandra, a ‘relic of the 60s’, is still pushing for women’s rights, yet men like Darren embody the suited business elite of the 80s, and women like Jane still exist to extol ‘housewifely’ virtues... (read more)