Toxic Town

“With so much pain and misery in the world, the prospect of a four-part drama based on a true story about birth defects caused by toxic waste from the reclamation of steelworks in Corby, Northamptonshire, might not float your boat. I get that. But it would be a shame to miss Toxic Town, and not just because its writer, Jack Thorne, manages to make a bleak and enraging story sing with a fizzing script. It’s because this is a piece of history.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It’s very watchable and, in the mould of Mr Bates vs the Post Office, highlights a scandal which failed to imprint itself on the public consciousness. But Netflix does feel like an odd home for this drama. You get the sense that writer Jack Thorne has kept the plot simple and by-numbers to please the streamer, yet his dialogue is unapologetically homegrown.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“The occasional cheesiness of Toxic Town doesn’t matter, especially when the writer, Jack Thorne, is so careful to mine this dire situation for nuggets of precious humanity. The emotional journey undergone by parents of disabled children, as they fight the instinct to believe that they are at fault and try to improve their children’s lives without treating them as a problem, is sensitively sketched. The difficulty for wronged individuals in taking a stand, when powerful enemies have ensured that doing so will come at great cost, is explored and acknowledged. The friendship between the two central characters – the sharp, belligerent and often scathingly funny Susan orbiting around Tracey’s quiet wisdom – is perfectly performed by an obviously award-worthy Jodie Whittaker and a less demonstrative but equally brilliant Aimee Lou Wood, who can convey all Tracey’s determination and smothered pain with a curve of a sad smile.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“There are only four episodes to Toxic Town, but the series still takes its time hammering home the injustice and indignity done to these mothers and their children. Whittaker is astonishing as Susan, cracking jokes one second and fervently fighting for what is right – she is the heartbeat of the entire series. Along with Wood and Bridgerton’s Claudia Jessie, who plays Maggie, another mother whose child was born with a limb difference and whose husband works at the demolition site, the women’s performances bring poignancy to what might have otherwise been a by-the-book legal retelling. In other words, all three of them made me cry.”
Emily Baker, The i

“Toxic Town sometimes feels too glossy; the characters too conveniently charismatic, the narrative beats too made for telly (Rory 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.”
Nick Hilton, The Independent