Netflix’s Toxic Town Launches Tomorrow

2 hours ago

Based on one of the UK’s largest environmental scandals in history, this limited series is brimming with British stars

This post may contain affiliate links. Learn more

In the early 2000s, news of the Corby poisonings sent shockwaves across the nation – but the story began much earlier than that. If you’re unfamiliar with the true events, we’re about to see them play out all over again in Netflix’s new limited series, Toxic Town.

‘It’s a genuinely working-class story,’ says series writer Jack Thorne. ‘It’s a story of people who are not part of the system that have never thought the system would work for them, working within the system and [fighting for] the result they deserved.’ Here’s what to know about Toxic Town before you tune in.

Toxic Town: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Toby Eden, Jodie Whittaker & Matthew James Hinchliffe in Toxic Town. (© Ben Blackall/Netflix)

What Will Happen?

Toxic Town tells the true story of the Corby poisonings, centring on the people at the heart of the cause: a group of mothers fighting for justice for their children. We mainly focus on three of the 19 mothers involved: Susan McIntyre (Jodie Whittaker), Tracey Taylor (Aimee Lou Wood) and Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie).

‘I didn’t know the story,’ series writer Jack Thorne tells Netflix. ‘I’d never heard of the people involved, and I’d never heard of the case until it was brought to me by [co-executive producers Annabel Jones and Charlie Brooker].’ But Thorne immediately spotted the potential for a TV drama. ‘It had within it a lot of drama,’ he says, ‘whether it’s the story of the trial itself, or whether it’s the way that these women got together and battled together.’

The Cast

Jodie Whittaker as Susan McIntyre
Aimee Lou Wood as Tracey Taylor
Claudia Jessie as Maggie Mahon
Robert Carlyle as Sam Hagen
Brendan Coyle as Roy Thomas
Rory Kinnear as Des Collins
Stephen McMillan
Lauren Lyle
Joe Dempsie as Derek
Michael Socha
Karla Crome

The True Story Behind Toxic Town

Corby, 1984: after being closed for three years, Corby Borough Council finally begins to demolish, excavate and redevelop a huge steelmaking plant spanning 680 acres (by 1981, one of the largest steelmaking operations in western Europe) and dating back to the 1930s. With four blast furnaces, two coke oven complexes and industrial waste galore, clean up posed a large operation, and stretched all the way to 1999. During this time, waste was transported through residential areas to a quarry in open lorries, meaning sludge spilled over the roads and dust was pumped into the air, but it wasn’t clear just yet what the impacts of this mismanagement would be.

By the late 1980s and ‘90s, the rates of upper limb difference in babies born in the area were at an all-time high: three times higher than children in the surrounding area, and 10 times higher than a town that size should expect. This means many children were born with missing fingers or toes. Eventually, the experts pieced it all together – the negligent handling of the waste was the cause of these deformities – and a group of families commenced their 11 year fight for justice.

‘The more you look into it, the more complicated it all becomes,’ Thorne says. ‘I’ve done legal dramas before, but this one… Being taken through the actual truth of it and seeing the journey that they had to go on in order to prove this, I found very surprising and shocking. There’s just so much internalised blame that these women obviously had [to deal with].’

However, Thorne was impressed by their ability to ‘collectively join together and work to actually empower not just themselves and their children, living or dead, but a whole community’.

‘It was just so incredible to see and to see how it affected other parts of their life,’ Thorne says. ‘It’s not just this simple hero’s journey of women banding together and fighting the man and getting this court victory. There’s nothing simple about it at all. You see where their power comes from, which is really just in the most basic level of humanity that they show for each other.’

Joe Dempsie as Derek in Episode 1 of Toxic Town

Where Was Toxic Town Filmed?

Toxic Town may be set in Corby, but the series was mainly filmed further north in Breightmet, a small village in Bolton, Greater Manchester. Additional filming took place in Stockport, Holmfirth, Liverpool and Sale.