In 1984, the town of Corby, 72 miles northwest of London, started moving to bulldoze the steelworks that used to be the region’s predominant source of employment. They brought orange and mud-brown sludge to Corby at high speeds and dumped it in a landfill. The environmental destruction resulting from the mud-brown sludge including dust in the skies and runoff contaminating water caused birth defects among countless infants in the vicinity.
“Toxic Town” documents the story of the mothers pursuing justice through a four part series, showcasing the council’s negligence and greed, spinning into a compelling tale of a successful lawsuit. The superb cast includes Jodie Whittaker portraying real-life Corby’s mother, Susan McIntyre. As a mother to one son already, Susan’s now painfully optimistic. When Connor is born sans left-hand fingers, Peter (Michael Socha) isn’t surprised by the testing of their newly found married-life kids.
Tracey Taylor (Aimee Lou Wood), also based on real-life residents, is a few wards down giving birth to Shelby Ann, who is greeted with a deformed ear, an absent left kidney, and a heart flawed with only two chambers where four should have been.
Shelby’s death is one of the most heartbreaking moments in the series, only shown through Tracey rubbing rust-coloured dirt off her daughter’s gravestone. Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie) has a husband Derek (Joe Dempsie, great as always) who drives for the reckless lorry-driving company that transports the sludge across town to a hole in the ground, paying him for each emptied load. The faster he drives, the more sludgy loads he delivers, and the more he gets paid. Their son Samuel is clubfooted.
If Brendan Coyle wanted to distance himself from the pervasive cheesiness of “Downton Abbey,” he manages to do so here as Roy Thomas, a character based on several people, including the infamously uncaring Corby council leader Kelvin Glendenning. Thomas sells the promise of economic revitalization with the fervour of a sideshow barker while he calmly swats away senior engineer Ted Jenkins’ (Stephen McMillan, excellent) muted concern about the suffocating levels of toxins in the air and ground. Every time Ted files a report, someone makes sure it is buried. He is offered bribes that he turns down. Enraged and frustrated, he goes to Sam Hagen (Robert Carlyle), the only morally sound town councillor who, in real life, became the whistleblower on Corby’s corrupt business and environmental practices.
But their attempts yield little results and instead, vandalised cars and evidence mysteriously set ablaze are added to the pile. It is not until journalist Graham Hind starts writing about the mothers in the Sunday Times that people are forced to pay attention. Lawyer Des Collins (Rory Kinnear) manages to win a tender to represent the mothers in court.
Even though the families’ tragedies started in the mid-1980s, a judge did not hear the matter in court until 2009.
Some of Minkie Spiro’s direction is, to be frank, a bit over the top. Maggie cleans the sills of their house and Derek’s uniforms in the garden; except as true, countless close-ups show streams of waste pouring into the municipal sewers. The villains are, for better or for worse, rather simplistic and almost ridiculous, particularly builder Pat Miller played by Ben Batt. Jack Thorne’s dialogues are at times too stylized; in the final parts of the series, people are much too blunt when expressing themselves, but they could have been more discreet and still conveyed the same mark of their conviction.
But as with plenty of British series, the acting makes up for any other creative oversights. Dempsie is captivating as a father grappling with the reality that his intentions to enhance his family’s financial standing may have irreparably damaged his son. The stillness of the anguish that plays through Susan and Peter as they fetch Connor is a captivating route for such a drama to pursue indeed, the impact of the children’s disabilities on each of the parents’ marriages is massive and adds abundant pathos to the story. But the best collaborative performance by far remains those of Whittaker and Wood. Susan’s wit and harshness complement Tracey’s self-assured calmness, and both of these actors made this writer weep.
When you get accustomed to analyzing American television shows, you tend to overlook the rather novel style of British television. There are no extravagant scenes, no lengthy speech, and no court-side “Perry Mason” type showmanship. Oddly enough, British critics reviewing “Toxic Town” find the series tone to be somewhat tacky, yet juxtaposed with American dramas, these four episodes offered the most restraint of any series I’ve watched in a while. The writing and directing could indeed be upgraded and the tension so often simmering just beneath the surface is eerily reminiscent of the “Aberfan” episode of “The Crown,” or any random minute of “Chernobyl.” Suffice it to say, “Toxic Town” is an excruciating experience and it doesn’t help that the mothers’ compensation settlement of £14.6 million after almost a decade of emotional turmoil is infuriating.
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