The new Netflix limited series Toxic Town is based on a real-life court case in England where a group of mothers accused the borough council in the town of Corby of negligence; even though they knew the soil they were digging up from the sites of old steel mills was highly toxic, they didn’t take the right measures to dredge it up and dispose of it properly. As a result, the children of the plaintiffs, a group of mothers in the town, were born with birth defects.
Opening Shot: “No one ever listened to me. I’m just a mum. So I had to make them listen,” says a voice.
The Gist: We see some real-life news clips about the town of Corby, in the Midlands of England. It used to be a steel town, where many Scottish people moved to for work. But since the steel mills closed in the late ’70s, attempts have been made to reinvigorate the town, including digging up the toxic soil that was created from waste from the mills.
In 1995, we meet three women who are about to find out that they’re pregnant. Susan McIntyre (Jodie Whittaker) and her husband Peter (Michael Socha) already have a son, but both seem to be overjoyed to be having another. Tracey Taylor (Aimee Lou Wood, currently turning heads on The White Lotus) and her husband Mark (Matthew Durkan) are a young couple having their first. Another couple about to have a baby are Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie) and her husband Derek (Joe Dempsie), who works hauling the toxic mud off the site of the former steel mill and always comes home caked in it.
Both Susan and Tracey have issues when their children are born. Susan’s son is born with a deformed right hand. She’s distraught that her gestational diabetes or her use of Valium early in the pregnancy might have been the cause. But she’s assured she did nothing wrong. However, Peter is so angered over his son having a birth defect that he packs up and leaves his family.
Tracey almost bleeds out after her daughter is born. While she’s in the hospital, the baby won’t feed or even move. It turns out that her heart and lungs weren’t fully developed; the baby girl dies after three days, leaving Tracey almost catatonic with grief.
In the meantime, a young council member, Ted Jenkins (Stephen McMillan), is concerned with the level of toxins found in the soil and how cavalierly contractors like Pat Miller (Ben Batt) dig up and haul away the toxic dirt, and how veteran councilmen like deputy lead Roy Thomas (Brendan Coyle) look the other way in order for contracts to go forward.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Because of the location and the industrial town vibes, Toxic Town reminds us of the murder-mystery series Sherwood.
Our Take: Based on a real-life court case, Toxic Town was written by Jack Thorne (Best Interests), with Annabel Jones and Charlie Brooker serving as two of the executive producers, so even though the show is about a pretty heavy topic, the show’s characters exhibit some caustic humor and a lot of sheer determination in this narrative, with each of the four episodes taking place in a different year between 1995 and 2009.
What Thorne is trying to show in Toxic Town is that, while the circumstances that bring Susan, Tracey, Maggie and a fourth woman, bartender Pattie Walker (Karla Crome), together is the idea that the powers that be in Corby completely disregarded reports that the toxins being hauled from the steel mill sites weren’t being disposed of properly, leading to their children’s birth defects. So it’s a story about determination and strength born from tragedy. But in the first episode, we have to get to the tragedy before we get to the victory.
Both Whitaker and Wood are great at showing the feelings pulling at new mothers who have to face the fact that their children are disabled. There will always be feelings of whether they did anything to cause the disabilities, but they show that the sadness is mixed with anger over the town and their contractors ignoring reports about the toxic soil.
Some of the beats of the story might be unnecessarily harsh, like Peter cruelly leaving Susan because their baby son has a deformed hand. But it also points out just what parents were facing back in the ’90s, when babies with birth defects were still seen in a somewhat negative light.
Sex and Skin: Some mild sex scenes where we see Tracey having some fun times with her husband.
Parting Shot: As Susan looks at her baby son and says, “We’ll set it right,” we then see a drone shot from the playground they’re on expand to show the entire town, and ominous smokestacks in the background.
Sleeper Star: Robert Carlyle plays Sam Hagen, a councilman who is constantly angling to lead committees for the town’s revitalization, and someone who knows that Ted is probing where he shouldn’t be.
Most Pilot-y Line: Sam finds Ted in the council office in the middle of the night, as Ted copies some files he found in the office of the councilman in charge of infrastructure projects. Ted never really asked Sam what he was doing there, which is either because he was young and nervous, or… well, we can’t think of any other reason.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Toxic Town is an intense but entertaining watch thanks mainly to fine performances by Whitaker and Wood, but also because Thorne paints a compelling picture of a town trying to revive itself while ignoring the dangers that lurk underneath it.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.