Ivan Radford | On 09, Mar 2025

From BBC One’s Salisbury thriller to ITV’s Litvinenko, TV loves a drama set around a famous poisoning. Less well-known but still important are the Corby poisonings of 1995, when the Northamptonshire town became the centre of a significant, horrific scandal.

A former steelworks hub, authorities at the time had a vision of rejuvenating the area by building a theme park and a wave of new homes. To do that, they needed to demolish the disused steel factories and clear the industrial land. Rather than dispose of it properly, it was carted down the road in open-top trucks and chucked into a nearby landfill. The result was a horrifying display of negligence that had serious ramifications for the residents.

We begin by watching that waste disposal in action, cadmium and toxic materials being casually manoeuvred about by drivers who didn’t know any better. While they race each other to offload the rubbish, Tracey (Aimee Lou Wood) has to scrape red sludge off her car every night. It’s only when she ends up meeting Susan (Jodie Whittaker) on a maternity ward, only for them both to give birth to children with disabilities that Susan starts to wonder what’s going on.

It’s a slow, patient start to the series that finds ominous tension in the clattering sound of careless disregard of people’s lives – and it frames it firmly through the eyes of those impacted. Whether you know or not that the emerging truth leads to a campaign and a legal battle, it’s impossible not to be swept up in it. The ubiquitous Jack Thorne is in his element here, writing a story that knows to stick to familiar, almost feel-good beats – playing out like Netflix’s answer to Mr Bates vs the Post Office, it’s smart enough to be accessible without losing the brains and heart to be moving.

A large part of that is thanks to the uniformly excellent cast. Aimee Lou Wood is quietly devastating as Tracey, who is dealt multiple tragic blows over the drama’s four episodes, but nonetheless remains a stoic source of wisdom and perspective. One of the many stars graduating from Netflix’s Sex Education to demonstrate their acting chops with mature material, she ensures that we don’t lose sight of the human drama amid the political tensions. In that arena, Robert Carlyle is heartfelt as the determined, honest Sam Hagen, who disapproves of the corruption overseen by council boss Roy (an enjoyably villainous Brendan Coyle, just on the right side of cartoonish).

Stephen McMillan as young whistleblower Ted, and the always-charming Rory Kinnear as lawyer-with-a-heart Des remind us that not all men in positions of power are bad eggs, but it’s the men on the fringes of authority who have the most deceptively meaty parts to play: Joe Dempsie as Derek, coming to terms with his unknowing role in the poisoning is superb, while Michael Socha is wonderfully ambiguous as Peter, a charismatic father figure who might be sincerely concerned or might just be out for a quick get-rich opportunity.

The star of the show, though, is undoubtedly Jodie Whittaker, who is heart-wrenching as the belligerent and boisterous Susan. Played as the louder, funny counterpart to Wood’s gentle strength, Whittaker is the perfect balance of outspoken rabble-rouser and earnest, wounded victim seeking justice – together, they sensitively explore the passion of parents wanting to better the lives of their children without seeing their disabilities as problems that need to be fixed. Whittaker’s barnstorming performance sets the town for the rest of Toxic Town – funny, stirring and immensely moving.

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