The Salisbury Poisonings

Last updated

The Salisbury Poisonings
Genre Crime Drama
Written by
  • Adam Patterson
  • Declan Lawn
Directed by Saul Dibb
Starring
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series1
No. of episodes3 (as first shown)
Production
ProducerKaren Lewis
Running time55 minutes
Production companyDancing Ledge Productions
Original release
Network BBC One
Release14 June (2020-06-14) –
16 June 2020 (2020-06-16)

The Salisbury Poisonings is a fact-based drama television series, starring Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall and Annabel Scholey [1] [2] which portrays the 2018 Novichok poisonings and decontamination crisis in Salisbury, England, and the subsequent Amesbury poisonings. The series was broadcast in three parts on BBC One in June 2020, [3] and has been shown in four parts elsewhere. It was created by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn [4] for Dancing Ledge Productions. [5]

Contents

Synopsis

On 4 March 2018, emergency services receive a call to attend to Sergei and Yulia Skripal who have been found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury city centre. Medical practitioners are initially puzzled by their illness, and police and the local public health department become involved. A national emergency is precipitated when it is learned that Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a double agent for the UK's intelligence services during the 1990s and early 2000s. It emerges that he and his daughter were poisoned with a highly potent Novichok agent which was smeared on the front-door handle of their residence. The docudrama also deals with the incidental exposure of several other persons, including a police officer and an uninvolved couple who found a perfume bottle containing the nerve agent which they administered to themselves. At the end of the series, the real-life people involved in the story are pictured returning to the scene, and some film is shown of Dawn Sturgess, the only person to die from their exposure to the Novichok.

Cast

Episodes

No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers
(millions)  [6]
1"Episode 1" Saul Dibb Adam Patterson & Declan Lawn14 June 2020 (2020-06-14)11.65
The Skripals and DS Bailey fight to survive, whilst the director of public health in Wiltshire, Tracy Daszkiewicz, and the emergency services try to locate the source of the nerve agent to prevent further casualties. [7]
2"Episode 2"Saul DibbAdam Patterson & Declan Lawn15 June 2020 (2020-06-15)10.77
CID officer Nick Bailey’s condition worsens as Tracy struggles to protect local residents against the numerous deposits of Novichok being found across the city. [8]
3"Episode 3"Saul DibbAdam Patterson & Declan Lawn16 June 2020 (2020-06-16)10.39
Several months later, the city is starting to forget and heal—until a scavenged perfume bottle leads to tragic consequences for local couple Dawn and Charlie. [9]

Reception

Writing in The Guardian , Lucy Mangan praised the show's script and direction as being "admirably restrained", and compared the calm actions of its characters facing a "new normal" to the reactions of the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. [10]

Release and distribution

Worldwide distribution is handled by Fremantle. In June 2020 it was announced that AMC signed an agreement with Fremantle to exclusively broadcast the show in the United States. [11] The AMC broadcast is slated to premiere 25 January 2021.

The series was shown over four nights on SBS TV in Australia from 24 August 2020. [12]

In December 2021 the series was re-released on Netflix [13] and Disney Plus. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. Nerve agents are irreversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitors used as poison.

These are lists of poisonings, deliberate and accidental, in chronological order by the date of death of the victim(s). They include mass poisonings, confirmed attempted poisonings, suicides, fictional poisonings and people who are known or suspected to have killed multiple people.

Novichok is a family of nerve agents, some of which are binary chemical weapons. The agents were developed at the GosNIIOKhT state chemical research institute by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. Some Novichok agents are solids at standard temperature and pressure, while others are liquids. Dispersal of solid form agents is thought possible if in ultrafine powder state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rafe Spall</span> British actor

Rafe Joseph Spall is an English actor.

Sergei Viktorovich Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who acted as a double agent for the United Kingdom's intelligence services during the 1990s and early 2000s. In December 2004, he was arrested by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and later tried, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. He settled in the United Kingdom in 2010 following the Illegals Programme spy swap. He holds both Russian and British citizenship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salisbury District Hospital</span> Hospital in Salisbury, England

Salisbury District Hospital is a large hospital on Odstock Road, Britford, Wiltshire, England, about 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) south of the centre of the city of Salisbury. It is managed by the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VR (nerve agent)</span> Chemical compound

VR is a "V-series" unitary nerve agent closely related to the better-known VX nerve agent. It became a prototype for the series of Novichok agents. According to chemical weapons expert Jonathan Tucker, the first binary formulation developed under the Soviet Foliant program was used to make Substance 33, differing from VX only in the alkyl substituents on its nitrogen and oxygen atoms. "This weapon was given the code name Novichok."

Annabel Scholey is an English actress. She played Lauren Drake in the BBC supernatural drama Being Human (2009) and the leading role of 'Maddie' in the musical feature film Walking on Sunshine (2014). Scholey played Contessina de Medici in the television series, Medici: Masters of Florence (2016) with Dustin Hoffman and Richard Madden. In 2021, she played the major recurring role of Claire Brown in Doctor Who: Flux.

Vil Sultanovich Mirzayanov is a Russian chemist of ethnic Tatar origin who now lives in the United States, best known for revealing secret chemical weapons experimentation in Russia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal</span> 2018 attempted murder in Salisbury, England

The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, also known as the Salisbury Poisonings, was a botched assassination attempt to poison Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies in the city of Salisbury, England on 4 March 2018. Sergei and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent. Both spent several weeks in hospital in a critical condition, before being discharged. A police officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident, and was later discharged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A-234 (nerve agent)</span> Chemical compound

A-234 is an organophosphate nerve agent. It was developed in the Soviet Union under the FOLIANT program and is one of the group of compounds referred to as Novichok agents that were revealed by Vil Mirzayanov. In March 2018 the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, claimed to have been informed by British authorities that A-234 had been identified as the agent used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Vladimir Uglev, one of the inventors of the Novichok series of compounds, said he was "99 percent sure that it was A-234" in relation to the 2018 Amesbury poisonings, noting its unusually high persistence in the environment.

On 30 June 2018, in Amesbury, two British nationals, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital in Wiltshire, England. Police determined that they were poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent of the same kind used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, 8 miles (13 km) away, almost four months prior. Sturgess died on 8 July, and Rowley regained consciousness two days later.

Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin is a doctor in the Russian General Staff's Main Directorate, the military intelligence service of the Russian Federation.

Pablo Miller is a British former intelligence officer with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), a former British diplomat and soldier who was first secretary of the British embassy in Estonia from 1997.

Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev, in Europe alias Sergej Fedotov is a Russian officer of military intelligence service GRU. He is suspected to be the local coordinator of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal 2018 in the UK and the 2015 poisoning of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in Sofia.

Tracy Daszkiewicz is a Deputy Director of Population Health and Wellbeing at Public Health England. She was formerly the Director of Public Health and Safety for the county of Wiltshire, England, where in 2018 she played a leading role in the response to the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poisoning of Alexei Navalny</span> Attack on Russian politician

On 20 August 2020, Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent and as a result, he was hospitalized in serious condition. During a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, he became ill and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing there, and then, he was put in a coma. He was evacuated to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany, two days later. The use of the nerve agent was confirmed by five Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) certified laboratories. On 7 September, doctors announced that they had taken Navalny out of the induced coma and that his condition had improved. He was discharged from the hospital on 22 September 2020. The OPCW said that a cholinesterase inhibitor from the Novichok group was found in Navalny's blood, urine, skin samples and his water bottle. At the same time, the OPCW report clarified that Navalny was poisoned with a new type of Novichok, which was not included in the list of controlled chemicals of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Insider is an independent online newspaper specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analytics. It was founded in 2013 by Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian journalist and the owner of the newspaper. The newspaper is known for exposing fake news in Russian media. The editorial office of the website is located in Riga, Latvia. Andris Jansons is the editor-in-chief of the website.

The Sixth Commandment is a four-part British true crime television drama series, written by Sarah Phelps and directed by Saul Dibb. Based on the murders of Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin, it stars Timothy Spall, Anne Reid, Sheila Hancock, Éanna Hardwicke, Annabel Scholey and Ben Bailey Smith.

Our Guys in Salisbury is a Russian board game that depicts the route of Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin from Moscow to the 2018 Salisbury poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The game was designed in November 2018 by Mikhail Bober, and released under the brand name Igroland shortly before Christmas that year. It reached international headlines in January 2019 due to its "poor taste" and "disregard" for the victims of the attack.

References

  1. ↑ Griffiths, Eleanor Bley (6 June 2020). "Meet the cast of The Salisbury Poisonings". Radio Times . Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  2. ↑ Tartaglione, Nancy; Kanter, Jake (31 May 2020). "'The Salisbury Poisonings': First Trailer For BBC One's Novichok Drama; Premiere Date Set; Creatives Talk Heroism Of A Community In Crisis". Deadline Hollywood . Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  3. ↑ McIntosh, Steven (14 June 2020). "The Salisbury Poisonings: TV drama revisits Novichok attack 'horror'". BBC News . Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  4. ↑ "BBC Two commissions two-part factual drama Salisbury, 17 May 2019". BBC . Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  5. ↑ Patterson, Adam; Lawn, Declan (10 June 2020). "How we made The Salisbury Poisonings". BBC Writers' Room. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  6. ↑ "Weekly top programmes on four screens (from Sept 2018)". BARB. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  7. ↑ "Series 1 Episode 1". BBC iPlayer. 14 June 2020.
  8. ↑ "Series 1 Episode 2". BBC iPlayer. 14 June 2020.
  9. ↑ "Series 1 Episode 3". BBC iPlayer. 14 June 2020.
  10. ↑ Lucy Mangan (14 June 2020). "The Salisbury Poisonings review – Novichok drama with lessons for now". The Guardian . Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  11. ↑ "The Salisbury Poisonings heads to the US". fremantle.com. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  12. ↑ Northover, Kylie (19 August 2020). "The Salisbury Poisonings is an extraordinary drama about ordinary people". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  13. ↑ "New documentary to air on Salisbury Novichok poisonings". Greatest Hits Radio (Salisbury). Retrieved 22 December 2021.
  14. ↑ "'The Salisbury Poisonings' Coming to Disney+ (UK/IRE)". 23 November 2021.
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