Series

Toxic Town

Name: Toxic Town
Director: Jack Thorne
Genre: Drama
Released: 2025
Cast: Jodie Whittaker, Aimee Lou Wood, Claudia Jessie, Karla Crome, Robert Carlyle

Jack Thorne · UK · 2025

Drama 2020s

Corby, Northamptonshire, the late 1990s. The town's defunct British Steel works has been the subject of a long, contracted-out clean-up, and over a stretch of years a striking number of babies in the town are born with limb-difference disabilities. A small group of local mothers, dismissed at first by doctors, lawyers and local officials, begin to compare notes and slowly build the case that becomes one of Britain's largest environmental tort actions.

Where to watch

About

Jack Thorne's Toxic Town launched on Netflix in February 2025 across four hour-long episodes, the BAFTA- and Olivier-winning writer's first major project for the streamer following his acclaimed Channel 4 limited series Help (2021) and his work on Adolescence the same year. The production is by Broke & Bones (Thorne's own company with Patrick Spence) and Minkie Spiro directs every episode. The series was developed in close consultation with the Corby families and their lawyer Des Collins.

The cast is led by Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who, Broadchurch) as Susan McIntyre, with Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education, The White Lotus) as Tracey Taylor and Claudia Jessie (Bridgerton) as Maggie Mahon. Robert Carlyle plays a former council foreman; Rory Kinnear plays Des Collins, the lawyer who took on the case. Cinematography is by Stephan Pehrsson; the score is by Bear McCreary.

British critics responded strongly, The Guardian, Variety and The Times placed the series among Netflix's most accomplished UK commissions of the year, with particular praise for the way Thorne lets the legal-procedural detail breathe rather than smoothing it into TV-drama shorthand. The show entered Netflix's UK top ten on launch day and prompted parliamentary follow-up from Corby's MP. Whittaker has since been nominated for the BAFTA TV Best Actress award.