Stealing hearts in Dr Death Season 2: how Dr Death operates

Imagine finding out that South African heart transplant pioneer Dr Christiaan Barnard committed research fraud, lied about surgical outcomes, dodged ethics reviews, and kept using failed medical procedures despite evidence that they killed previous patients – all while his colleagues and the media hailed him as a genius. 

That’s the horror story at the heart of true crime drama series Dr Death Season 2. But the doctor on call is thoracic surgeon Dr Paolo Macchiarini (Edgar Ramírez, Resistance), whose work in creating a supposed bioengineered synthetic transplant trachea made him the toast of Sweden’s renowned medical university hospital, the Karolinska Institutet (KI), after he was headhunted by then-secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, Urban Lendahl. 

While the work of Swedish and British investigative journalists was key to stopping Dr Macchiarini’s trail of destruction, another journalist, NBC News producer Benita Alexander (Mandy Moore, Chasing Liberty), not only helped create the 2013 documentary A Leap Of Faith, which touted Dr Macchiarini as a brave pioneer willing to take chances in the name of science, but she also fell in love with him. 

How did he get away with it, and how did she not notice? That’s what Dr Death Season 2 is here to show us.

Binge Dr Death Seasons 1-2 on Showmax now. 

Open heart surgery

According to Mandy, Benita was a brilliant woman, but one who needed hope so badly at the time that it blinded her. “Benita was just so capable, so smart and at the top of her game in her field. And yet, with just the slightest bit of vulnerability, she was in this position to be preyed upon by someone like Paolo,” muses Mandy. “It’s not as if she had never been in situations with incredibly impressive people, especially men who are handsome and charming and also incredibly impressive in their own fields. I just think that this was a moment where she was dealing with a lot in her personal life. Because her ex-husband was ill and she was essentially a single mother.” 

And in came Dr Macchiarini, who dazzled her. “You have this brilliant doctor who’s pioneering this very exciting field of medicine, and he’s chosen you and wants to wine and dine you and then propose. It’s like every part of your life is just touched by magic,” says Mandy. “And he says things like the wedding is going to be officiated by the Pope, and a laundry list of really important, impressive people are going to be there. I think the way that he doled it all out made it very easy to swallow that it was plausible…it was a little bit terrifying. The way that Paulo preyed on Benita, I really could see myself in that position.”

In love with Dr Death

“You would think that Dr Death is a navigation of medical malpractice. But in the case of the second season, it is actually within the love story that explores greater subjects of humanity. It’s exploring trust, hope, betrayal, love, unfinished chapters,” reveals Edgar. “I think that he was very, very astute and twistedly sensitive to identify the stories that were unfinished in Benita’s life. He preyed on them just to go through those cracks for his own satisfaction. The more intelligent, the more skilled and the more accomplished his targets were, the bigger satisfaction he would get…that is a very clear symptom of pathological narcissism. The only explanation was that he just couldn’t help it. The reality is that it was precisely the love story with Benita that precipitated his demise and undoing.” 

A deadly fantasy

Dr Macchiarini’s wedding plans were just part of the fantasy world he’d created around himself. “The Paolo I played in the show lives in this fantasy. It’s a web of lies for the exterior world, but for him, it’s an ultimate fantasy,” adds Edgar. “For him, he was not lying, he was not causing any damage. He was just being very faithful and very committed to his fantasy. Paolo lived within a fantasy of his own for as long as he could. And that was fascinating to me that someone could pull this off and juggle with so many loose ends. I think that he got a satisfaction out of it all until it was impossible. And even when he was faced with the reality of his lies, he still did not admit that anything wrong was done to anyone. He never admits any accountability or any responsibility for any deed.”

From fantasy to reality

But while Paolo is busy seducing Benita and basking in public adulation, Dr Death shows us the reality behind his fantasy. Episode 5, particularly, focuses on the agonising, prolonged suffering of Yesim Cetir, a patient who goes from post-transplant optimism, to having to undergo a horrific 191 further surgeries while feeling as if she’s rotting from the inside, and even pulling out her own teeth. In a true horror story form, no matter what Yesim says or suspects, nobody in authority will believe that the monster is in the room with them. Instead, they just hand him his next victim.

Binge Dr. Death Seasons 1-2 on Showmax now.