The primary heroes of the series are the women who gave birth to babies with birth defects, especially Susan and Tracey, both played by English actresses with distinguished acting careers.
The four-part (47–65 minutes each) series “Toxic Town” (2025) is one of those depictions that Progressives can love. The “good guys” win. It has been compared to the 2000 U. S. film Erin Brokovich, but it also reminds us of the Flint, Mchigan water crisis of 2014-2019. By mentioning the “win,” I am revealing how the series ends, but it won’t surprise most viewers. Besides, they will still be left with the sheer enjoyment of watching the sharp directing (by Minkie Spiro) and good acting (by an excellent, mainly British, cast) of the series. And, most of all, the great enjoyment of seeing good triumph over evil–a pleasure in short supply in these Trumpian times, especially on environmental issues.
But, unlike Erin Brokovich and the Flint crisis, the new series is set in England, in the Midlands region. It’s primarily a true story about litigation against the Corby Borough Council, which was found guilty (in 2009) of abetting deformities (resulting from toxic waste) among fetuses between 1984 and 1999.
The series takes its time–not until Episode 4–before the case comes to court (See here for a link to the scripts of all four episodes.) And in earlier episodes, there is no certainty that it ever will. Directing the borough council, Roy Thomas (the excellent, multi-award winning actor Brendan Coyle) is convinced he is right in making the compromises he manages and oversees in the council’s efforts to redevelop a massive site (one of Western Europe’s largest) that was closed and abandoned in 1981 by the British Steel Corporation.
Toward the end of the last episode he has a few words after the courtroom battle with the lawyer for his opponents, Des Collins (another multi-award winning actor, Rory Kinnear). He tells him, “Don't you see? All you've done is made sure towns like ours don't survive.” And sometimes “there are other needs” besides health and safety. To which lawyer Collins says, “Yeah, profits over people.”
And yes, indeed, “profits over people” could be the mantra of the series’ “uber capitalists” and those that Sen. Bernie Sanders decries, capitalists such as those who ran Purdue Pharma, which pushed its opioid product OxyContin even if it killed people, many of which it did.
Lawyer Collins, however, is motivated by other considerations. As he tells Roy Thomas, what he did in and out of court, he did at his own risk–he would not receive any lawyer fee unless he won the case. He “did all this, because it mattered.
Because I believe [he states] that people need protecting.” In other words, he put his values before profits.
But the primary heroes of the series are the women who gave birth to babies with birth defects, especially Susan (Jodie Whittaker) and Tracey (Aimee Lou Wood), both played by English actresses with distinguished acting careers. What impresses this reviewer is the fierce love, determination, and courage of these women for their children born with defects caused by the Corby Borough Council’s determination to save money and profit from the mess left by British Steel.
In addition to the mothers and lawyer Collins are two men who aid the mothers–fathers and boyfriends are less useful and sometimes actually impede the mothers’ efforts. One supporter is city councilor, Sam Hagen (Robert Carlyle); another is a young man and recent college graduate, Ted Jenkins (Stephen McMillan), who works for Roy Thomas. Both men are played by excellent Scottish actors–Corby has been referred to as “Little Scotland” because many of its residents moved from Motherwell, Scotland to work at the British-Steel owned Corby Steelworks. (In having women, younger people, and the better educated criticizing businesses and holding them responsible for environmental harm, the series is in keeping with U. S. polls.)
Another helper of the mothers in “Toxic Town” is the British judicial system, which delivers to their afflicted children millions of British pounds (the exact amount is flashed on the screen at the series end, and remember in mid 2009 the pound was worth about 1.5 U. S. dolllars.)
As in Britain, the U. S. judicial system also offers the possibility of victories for environmental causes. Despite the victories the Trump administration has won from the Supreme Court, the former’s success in all future Supreme Court environmental cases is by no means guaranteed. And many lower court judges have overturned Trump’s executive orders.
Yet, the mothers in the Corby litigation had a strong personal reason for suing. In U. S. environmental cases, those battling the Trump administration may not have such a strong and immediate motive for opposition. They may need to be more informed voters, those capable of realizing the tremendous evil consequences that Trump environmental policies will eventually cause. Realizing that placing profits before those effects will endanger not only present, but also future generations. And they will need to be not only mindful of long-range consequences, but tenaciously committed to fighting in order to ensure they never occur. Need to be as determined as Don Quixote in his “Impossible Dream” song, “This is my quest...to fight for the right, without question or pause...To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause.”
