Frontline is the first instalment in a series charting the rise of a prominent medical family in the 20th Century. From war to a global pandemic, the discovery of penicillin and the birth of the NHS, the Burnetts find themselves at the centre of domestic and international developments in public health.
It's 1914 and Europe is at war with itself. Grace is the daughter of the landed gentry, who defies her parents' wishes and volunteers as a nurse on the Western Front. Will is the son of a dockworker and doing his best to keep himself out of trouble, working nights as a hospital porter and trying to get through school. But the lure of patriotism and the thrill of adventure prove irresistible and he enlists while still in his middle teens.
We experience the atrocities of life in the trenches through the eyes of these two characters, whose lives collide in a field hospital in France. By then, Will is a stretcher bearer whose medical talents impress all the doctors. Grace is an ambulance driver whose bravery and compassion is legendary within the army.
But as rumours of an armistice begin to circulate, so does a virus of mysterious origins, carrying with it an unimaginable death toll of soldiers and civilians across the globe.