Journalists and lawyers are sometimes accused of being “ambulance chasers”. They follow tragedy in pursuit of profit: a good story or a payout. It is an unflattering – and often deeply unfair – label, but you can add to that list television producers, who have a better eye than anyone for the moments when real trauma can become compelling drama. That’s the case with Netflix’s Toxic Town, another searchlight shone into the dark heart of Britain’s cover-up culture.
The Northamptonshire town of Corby – once known as “Little Scotland” due to the number of workers from north of the border – boomed after the Second World War, feeding Britain’s seemingly insatiable appetite for steel. But as the 20th century came to its close, that industry began to dwindle – and Corby’s decline began in earnest. In this landscape of decay, negligence began to seep into the management of the old steelworks. “British steel did a s*** and didn’t flush,” the manager of one site pronounces. “And now we’re the bog brush.” Meanwhile, down on the maternity ward in the town, several mothers – including fiery Susan (Jodie Whittaker), wide-eyed Tracey (Aimee Lou Wood), and uptight Maggie (Claudia Jessie) – give birth to children with limb difference. Some survive; some don’t.
The four-episode series then charts the search for justice. Compensation, yes, but more importantly answers about this “cluster” of incidents. Was the water poisoned? Was it bad meat? Or was it something else entirely? Unravelling this requires getting to the heart of the collusion between Corby Borough Council and local entrepreneurs looking to redevelop the poisoned earth. Brendan Coyle’s dodgy council deputy, Roy, tells a skittish young worker that he must “find a balance between the red tape and the reality” – but that “reality” comes at a terrible price. The consequences will lead the Corby mothers to the High Court and, eventually, to systemic, lifesaving changes to waste management.
Written by Jack Thorne – a great chronicler of political failure, who has been in relentless employment for the past decade – Toxic Town sprinkles the emergent televisual genre, “British injustice”, with some Netflix glitz. Where ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office used Toby Jones’s Alan Bates as something of a cipher - a relentless, single-minded vigilante - Toxic Town imbues the Corby mothers with big, colourful dollops of personality. Whittaker’s Susan is first encountered singing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, she drags home one-night stands and leads choruses of “The Wheels on the Bus”. Wood’s Tracey, too, is an engaging ingenue and the emotional heart of the drama.
The mothers’ lawyer, Des Collins, is played by stalwart everyman Rory Kinnear, whose previous Netflix movies, Bank of Dave and Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger - which followed Burnley businessman Dave Fishwick’s attempts to set up a community bank - are aesthetic siblings to Toxic Town. This is not Mike Leigh, not gritty social realism, but a story about empowerment along the road to the truth. “Justice,” Tracey tells her husband. “We’re going to get justice.” In much of the publicity, the story has been referred to as ‘the British Erin Brockovich”, alluding to the Nineties case of groundwater contamination in California. But an equally striking similarity is the presentation: both Toxic Town and Erin Brockovich understand the value of a good story, told with a lightness, a nimbleness, of touch.
As a consequence, Toxic Town sometimes feels too glossy; the characters too conveniently charismatic, the narrative beats too made for telly (Kinnear’s lawyer has a eureka moment that is right out of Sherlock Holmes). But Thorne’s script just about stays the right side of cliche (though it is extremely sentimental), and the cast, particularly Whittaker and Wood, are very watchable. Their story might not be an open wound, like that of the subpostmasters, but the industrial sloppiness and subsequent cover-up should, and will, boil the blood of most viewers. Britain, it feels at times, is a patchwork of travesties; a population comprised of wrongdoers and the wronged.
While international audiences might not fully understand the nuances of Britain’s industrial decline or the communities left behind in the wake of this, every country has similar stories: people who are treated as though they don’t matter, who are exposed to unnecessary risks, and whose concerns are subsequently dismissed. Historic ills are not righted by Netflix dramas, but they can be brought to the surface, and the result here is unexpectedly uplifting. Toxic Town's winning, underdog spirit brightens a universal tale, a final salvo in the fight to be heard.
