The week in TV: Toxic Town; Small Town, Big Story; Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October; Dope Girls

The Guardian

02-03-2025

Toxic Town (Netflix)Small Town, Big Story (Sky Max)Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7 October (BBC Two) | iPlayerDope Girls (BBC One) | iPlayer
Sometimes TV drama has a job to do: drag skeletons out of closets and let them rattle. So it is with Toxic Town, the four-part Netflix real-life drama from Jack Thorne, initially set in the mid-1990s, about industrial poisonings in 1980s/90s Corby, Northamptonshire that led to birth defects, including missing limbs.
The son of outspoken Susan (Jodie Whittaker) has a hand affected; the daughter of gentle Tracey (Aimee Lou Wood) dies soon after birth. Maggie, played by Claudia Jessie from Bridgerton, has a son with a disfigured foot. Many others are born with abnormalities, caused by lethal dust irresponsibly churned up by the protracted and mishandled clean-up and redevelopment of a former steel plant in the 1980s and 90s, leading to a 2009 court case that set a legal precedent for a link between airborne toxins and birth defects.
Corby is another character here – an area struggling to regenerate, with some people prepared to cut health and safety corners to ensure it does so. Scottish accents are everywhere (so many Scots settled in Corby, it was dubbed 'Little Scotland'). Toxic Town also features male acting powerhouses: Downton Abbey's Brendan Coyle as the council boss ('New Labour, new Corby'); Robert Carlyle as a whistleblowing councillor; Michael Socha and Joe Dempsie as fathers; Rory Kinnear as a dogged decent lawyer.
At heart, though, Toxic Town is about working-class mothers who refuse to belt up. In a drama so steeped in maternal anger and grief, it's crucial that the women are convincing, and they are, in particular Whittaker as fiery, lairy Susan ('Keep your wig on!').
At times, exposition billows around almost as much as the noxious dust, and there's too much emphasis on woolly legal minutiae. Nor is it quite at the level of Mr Bates vs the Post Office, though (spoiler alert) it is stirring to witness the mothers win their case (even if, as stated in a postscript, no one faced criminal charges and there are still toxic landfills everywhere). Those concerns aside, Toxic Town emerges as a complex, devastating story told with heart. Respect for its subjects pours from the screen.
What exactly is Small Town, Big Story, the new Sky Max series created, written and directed by Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd)? It's a comedy-drama about a Hollywood TV production invading the fictional Irish town of Drumbán to make a terrible Games of Thrones-esque fantasy series called I Am Celt. It also has a sci-fi element, with dead birds falling from the sky, and an incident involving a Hollywood producer (Christina Hendricks of Mad Men fame) and Drumbán doctor (Paddy Considine) back when they were teenage sweethearts.
O'Dowd shows up as a rascally creative, but the cast is led by Hendricks and Considine, whose wheelchair-user teacher wife (Eileen Walsh) steals the show with her unabashed sexual antics. Elsewhere, much of the humour lies in the eccentricity of the locals, which gets a little wearing (it's funniest when it's character-based and dry). At the end of six episodes, STBS remains confusing – kind of an Irish Local Hero meets Seth Rogen's Paul – but at its best it's entertaining – and the fantasy show spoofing ('Oi am Celt!') is genuinely funny. Any chance Sky could make it for real?
Documentarian Norma Percy is known for tackling huge, serious subjects (from The Death of Yugoslavia to Putin vs the West). Her new three-part BBC Two docuseries, Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7 October, largely focuses on the two decades leading up to the Hamas atrocities in Israel in 2023. Some may consider this too tight a time-frame for such a sprawling, labyrinthine subject, but it enables Percy to focus on her speciality: accessing central players and letting them speak.
Interviewees include former prime ministers (Israel's Ehud Omert and Tony Blair) and also, controversially, Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh (the latter was assassinated weeks after his interview). Elsewhere, there are diplomats, politicians and former US secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. 'American secretaries of state are like moths to a flame when it comes to the Middle East,' observes Rice, wryly.
You watch as sundry US presidents (Obama, Trump, Biden) attempt to help establish the two-state solution with Palestine's former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon, Omert and Benjamin Netanyahu. As shown here, everything fails: from the time it is elected, Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as a state or lay down arms; in turn, there is the expansion of Israeli settlements on the West Bank in violation of international law, and the bombing of the Al-Aqsa mosque. A torrent of reasons are aired, too numerous and complicated to list here.
The events of 7 October barely feature, which feels jarring (especially considering the ongoing hostage situation), but then neither is there much on the bombing of Gaza. In the main, this is a docuseries that opts to stay impartial and maintain strict focus on the two decades of Middle Eastern and international politics. Percy's take isn't perfect (you sense she was overwhelmed with material and could have easily included a fourth instalment), but as a detailed, measured overview, it delivers.
Having caught up with new BBC drama Dope Girls, I've learned that it's not the failed female Peaky Blinders I was expecting. Created and written by Polly Stenham and Alex Warren, it's set in London in the chaotic, violent aftermath of the first world war and focuses on women embracing lawlessness to set up a nightclub while a vicious Italian crime family hovers in the background.
Delivering a tale of butchered bodies, drugs, occultism, sexual excess and more, the cast is strong: Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown) is a mother driven to desperate lengths; Umi Myers plays an avant-garde dancer; Eliza Scanlen (Sharp Objects) is a dead-eyed undercover policewoman.
Over six episodes, Dope Girls is scuppered repeatedly by grating production flourishes (scribblings on the screen, and the like) and overcooked symbolism (the first episode has Nicholson wandering around in angel wings like a festival teenager addled on CBD gummies). But the atmosphere is less Steven Knight, more Sarah Waters meets Angela Carter: left-field, dreamlike, female-centric, wild. Dope Girls can be overblown and messy, but it's also passionate and promising.
Star ratings (out of five) Toxic Town ★★★★Small Town, Big Story ★★★Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October ★★★★Dope Girls ★★★
1923(Paramount+)
Much-anticipated second series return for Taylor Sheridan's gnarled, gritty western (a Yellowstone prequel), starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.
David Frost Vs (Sky Documentaries)
A fascinating retrospective series of excerpts from Frost interviews, in which he verbally spars with everyone from Muhammad Ali to the Beatles. One for fans of the classic 20th-century long-form television interview.
Loch Ness: They Created a Monster(BBC Two)
Offbeat documentary about 'Nessie' that's also about the people from all over the world, from scientific teams to eccentrics, who yearn to glimpse the beast of Scottish Highlands legend.