Netflix is about to add ‘flawless’ drama based on horrifically underreported true story

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Netflix is about to add a chilling drama based on a terrifying true story.

Starring Doctor Who actress Jodie Whittaker and Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, Toxic Town dramatizes a horrific scandal from the 1980s.

It tells one of the country’s biggest environmental scandals and the stories of the people involved in the Corby poisonings.

The four-part programme follows a group of four mothers who fought for justice over more than 10 years after their children developed birth defects affecting their hands and feet in one of the UK’s most historically significant cases.

In a landmark High Court ruling in 2009, Corby Borough Council was found negligent in its management of toxic waste at a former steelworks site in the town during the 1980s and 90s.

The steelworks in Corby were closed in 1980, and the council then began demolishing the site to repurpose it, but waste was transported through nearby towns in the process.

A new drama based on a devastating true story is coming to Netflix (Picture: Ben Blackall/Netflix/PA Wire)

Toxic dust was released in the air and would transfer between people in public spaces.

18 mothers claimed there was a correlation between their babies being born with defects and the removal of toxic waste, launching an investigation.

The council denied it was negligent and that there was any link between the removal of waste to a quarry north of the site and deformities affecting hands and feet, but the court found there was a ‘statistically significant’ cluster of birth defects between 1989 and 1999, and the council later agreed to pay compensation to the children affected.

Jodie Whittaker stars as one of the mum’s fighting for justice (Picture: Netflix, Inc./Ben Blackall. All Rights Reserved)

While the scandal was horrific, it’s become unknown to many people including Toxic Town writer Jack Thorne, who told Netflix Tudum: ‘I didn’t know the story, I’d never heard of the people involved, and I’d never heard of the case until it was brought to me.’

He added: ‘It had within it a lot of drama, whether it’s the story of the trial itself, or whether it’s the way that these women got together and battled together.’

Thorne went on: ‘The more you look into it, the more complicated it all becomes, 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.’

The series drops on Netflix in two days (Picture: Netflix)

As well as Jodie playing Susan McIntyre and Aimee as Tracey Taylor, the cast includes Bridgerton’s Claudia Jessie as Maggie Mahon, and features Robert Carlyle, Brendan Coyle and Rory Kinnear.

In the trailer, Jodie’s character Susan, who is a real person whose son was born without fingers on one hand, says her son ‘has been in pain his entire life and it wasn’t his fault’.

As she fights for justice, Aimee’s character Tracey adds: ‘I’m here for them (the children) and the damage my council did them.’

Early reviews have branded Jodie ‘flawless’ in the series, with The Guardian’s Rachel Aroesti writing: ‘Toxic Town transforms a painfully sad tale of infuriating injustice into something that’s just about bearable to watch.’

Toxic Town drops on Netflix on Thursday, February 26.

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