How great series are madeOriginal title: The Salisbury Poisonings
Year: 2020
Duration: 4 episodes of 45 min.
Country: United Kingdom
Director: Saul Dibb
On Wikipedia we can find these two entries: 1) poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, and 2) 2018 Amesbury poisonings. These entries contain the facts that the series Death in Salisbury(The Salisbury Poisonings) develops quite reliably.
On March 4, 2018 Sergey Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the UK intelligence services, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in the city of Salisbury, England, with a Novichok nerve agent. Novichok refers to a family of nerve agents that were developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. Some sources describe them as the most deadly ever made.
Now that we are living through the COVID pandemic, we are very aware of public health issues. This BBC series brings us closer to what could have been a health catastrophe and fortunately, was not.
The screenwriters have done extensive research and interviews to tell the story. The story begins on a park bench in Salisbury, where Sergey and Yulia were found unconscious. It looked like a drug overdose, a case often encountered by the police, but tests revealed that there was no trace of narcotics.
The series follows the story in a chronological fashion and articulates it from the police investigation. A key figure is Wiltshire's director of public health, Tracy Daszkiewicz. She has to manage the response to a health crisis that no one could have expected. From our current situation it is easy to empathize with her.
Another character that runs throughout the series is the police officer who came to the home of those affected and was also infected. Both she and the other key characters are portrayed in the context of their family history. The policeman's wife has to cope with the situation with two young daughters.
But perhaps the most interesting character is Dawn Sturgess, a working-class mother struggling with her addictions. She becomes infected in an accidental way. In a way the series is a tribute to this character's story, a story forgotten on the horizon of a geopolitical conflict that all this caused.
The actors (MyAnna Buring, Anne-Marie Duff and Rafe Spall) play the role to perfection.
Although the story may be familiar, the series is entertaining and the pace does not slacken. At the end of the series, real images of the protagonists of the story appear. The actors are more "handsome", but that's what movies are for.
