The Salisbury Poisonings is a fact-based television drama, starring Anne-Marie Duff, Rafe Spall and Annabel Scholey 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. It was created by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn for Dancing Ledge Productions.
It was the highest rating new drama on British TV for five years, consolidating to an audience of over 12 million viewers and has been sold to over 130 territories. It won the 2021 Broadcast Awards for the International Programme Sales category.
The oppressive scale, unwieldiness and essential unknowability of the developing problem is – we can say now with unwanted certainty – perfectly evoked.
The Salisbury Poisonings is a deeply affecting piece of television – and as it turns out, the obvious story was not the most interesting story after all.