Der Giftanschlag von Salisbury

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

In March of 2018, in the small town of Salisbury in Wiltshire, two Russian spies unleashed a deadly Novichok nerve agent, plunging the town in to a lockdown. Tracey Daszkiewicz (Anne-Marie Duff), the recently appointed local director of Public Health, is thrust in to the spotlight, taking tough decisions in the best interest of her local neighbours and friends, including local DS Nick Bailey (Rafe Spall) who is badly struck down with poisoning, while the situation takes its toll on her home life with her family.

For just under two years now, the whole of the country (and indeed the world) has been forced to adapt to a new way of life, in order to combat the outbreak of a deadly virus, but a couple of years before, in a small town in Wiltshire, a local community was forced to adapt their behaviour to control a situation contained only for them. Even if most of us didn't have to live through it, with the events of the last couple of years, there is at least now a sad air of relatability with this dramatisation of the time by director Saul Dibb.

Initially, in the first episode, Dibb goes for a minimalist, less is more approach, capturing the unfolding events in a docu-drama style fashion, presenting normal, everyday people going about their everyday lives, dealing with their individual problems and dramas, before being thrust in to a major crisis completely out of their control. While this does give it a realistic, outside world feel, it comes at the expense of any real effective character development, leaving us less able to relate and empathise with the characters as we should. He matches the mood and tone of the drama throughout with some appropriate dull, grey lighting, but is less consistent with the character portrayals, which by the second episode have become more screechy and melodramatic.

It's flaws sadly keep it from being the sum of its parts, but it's still elevated by what it gets right, along with some strong, raw lead and supporting performances. ***

In the main I enjoyed this drama. My only problem with it is the problem I have with many TV dramas, and that is that it was overly dramatic and at times overacted. Too many scenes of Anne-Marie Duff and her obnoxious son which didn't drive the narrative beyond that she was working hard and wasn't home as much as usual. In fact there were too many scenes of character's home lives and not enough of the police investigation in general. The dialogue was at times unconvincing and unnatural too. I'm sure everyone who worked on the case at the time found it draining at times, but the writer turned up the misery on everyone's faces to 11 and for me that's just lazy and not at all like real life at all. They could have cut out about 1 hour of the over sentimental nonsense and made it a really good watch, but they didn't hence 7 stars from me.

I did enjoy learning the story, and the performances were fine. However, when I was done, I had questions about, Tracy, the public health director. She's our main character, but I really had no idea what her job entails. Maybe they could have added, at least a few, examples of Tracy performing some functions of the job. It was a disservice to the real life person portrayed because the only thing they showed was her distraught, stressed and void of confidence. She was overworked, but I never saw her work. She would show up somewhere and just looked wrecked. If her job was to show up and look wrecked at her job, she was excellent. As a bonus, when at home, she looked wrecked there too.

This event drew my attention when it happened and I eagerly followed this story, as I had once lived in Salisbury, but not this one. It is pleasing to see that the BBC made a mini-series of this dastardly deed and it certainly filled all the gaps, which were never disclosed in news bulletins.

The production is well done making a thrilling exposé of the happenings and aftermath. A dramatic event well worth seeing to realize that the world is still not a safe place to live in. This event took place just 2 years ago, but the investigation only concluded in 2019.

So to the one star reviewers, are you being paid to do them?

Let's start with ricpambon - well he has only submitted this one review, that should tell you something. He says that Dawn sprays the liquid on her wrist in the first episode, she doesn't, she may well spray something then but not from the Novichok bottle. The people involved were interviewed for the series and I would have though Charlie could have told them where he found the bottle so to say the BBC don't know is plainly ridiculous.

AnthonyVincentBruno - well is only contribution is a two line slag off of Marc Addy, did he steal your wife? No other constructive criticism, so why bother.

Smoochemail - well again the only review this person has submitted so I find that as suspect as the first one I mentioned. their erroneous comment that you don't recover from Novichok is laughable when four people quite obviously did!

pkeenor - again only this one review, how do you expect us to believe you?

dayeym - probably the only believable review, other reviews are mixed. Maybe it was too long for him but to say it's rubbish with no explanation other than it was too long isn't' right.

So to my opinion, well I used to live near Salisbury, moved abroad before this incident happened but still had family in the area when it did, still do. So i recognised a lot of the locations used, yes they did film in the city.

I thought all the cast were believable, yes even the fat bloke from the Tesco ads. When you saw the real people at the end you realised how well they were cast. As a previous reviewer stated Anne-Marie Duff was excellent and nice not to have a supermodel play the part, as the Yanks would have done. Rafe Spall well he is a chip off the old block isn't he! MyAnna Burning from Ripper Street, and more, proves what a versatile actor she is, born in Sweden, you wouldn't know it from the accent here. Then there is Annabel Scholey from The Split, I could go on, there wasn't a duff performance here,

The fact that the real protagonist are shown at the end proves they were all involved in the creation of this series. To say it was a misrepresentation of the facts is an insult those involved and particularly the family and memory of Dawn Sturgess, shame on you.