Streaming on Netflix now…
It was one of the biggest stories of 2018 when Russian double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned in the rural city of Salisbury.
It is believed Sergei and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent, by Russian spies.
They both spent weeks in hospital in a critical condition, as the UK – and the world – came to terms with such a ferocious act happening in such a quiet and unassuming part of the country.
Now, Netflix has dropped a true crime series about the Salisbury poisonings which audiences are already loving. The Salisbury Poisonings was originally released on the BBC in 2020 but has just hit the streaming platform.
Netflix’s description of the show reads: “The Novichok poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter sends ripples through Salisbury and the lives of its townsfolk.”
Some of the early responses on social media suggest this’ll be a good one to hunker down to over the Christmas break.
been too busy watching the Salisbury Poisonings to tweet tonight
— cunt (@HypnoHannah) December 24, 2021
https://twitter.com/TishhTashh_/status/1474033827592953862
Only part way through The Salisbury Poisonings.. can’t believe this is based on true events. Colossal 😱😳 so gripping. I remember this story like it was yesterday 😱
— Amy Willetts (@amywilletts89) December 22, 2021
https://twitter.com/kaitIynn__/status/1473785836151914499
Okay, Salisbury Poisonings on Netflix, you have to
— Wik 🌸 (@WikMatuszewska) December 23, 2021
The Salisbury poisonings on Netflix is an incredible series
— Rachel🌻 (@SmaleyRachel) December 21, 2021
A new Discovery Plus documentary, Secrets of Salisbury Poisonings, also airs on December 26. It revisits some of the human stories behind the tragedy, such as the story of Dawn Sturgess, a Salisbury resident who died after finding a discarded perfume bottle in the bin containing the nerve agent and spraying herself with it, mistakenly thinking the bottle contained perfume.
The Salisbury Poisonings on Netflix stars a couple of big UK names, including Nowhere Boy‘s Anne-Marie Duff, and Kidulthood‘s Rafe Spall. Like the Discovery Plus documentary, it focuses on the impact of the attacks on society, rather than any of the politics.
“We felt with Salisbury there was an untold human story that should be told as soon as we started researching it,” said writer Declan Law when the show was originally released on the BBC. “We found these incredible stories that no one had ever heard before about the response to what happened there.”
Writer Adam Patterson said: “The agreement we came to with us and the BBC was that we would only tell the story if the people affected wanted to tell it, and I think ethically that puts us in the right place to tell it, but also we wanted to do something different, we didn’t want to speculate on the spy angle, we wanted to look at it through a different lens, and essentially look at how an invisible threat can essentially just destroy a place.”
In terms of the attack itself, police detective work identified two Russian individuals believed to have carried out the poisoning on Sergei, probably because he worked for the British intelligence services in the 1990s and 2000s. Russia have denied any involvement.
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