Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Salisbury Poisonings’ On AMC+, A True Story About How A British City Locked Down After A Poisoning

What is AMC+? Well, given the trend of adding a plus sign to a network name to indicate a premium streaming service, AMC+ is a newish streaming service from AMC. Available on a limited basis (Comcast, Apple TV, and a very few other platforms have it), AMC+ has full runs of some of the network’s top shows, like Mad Men. But it also has original series. One of the first to premiere is The Salisbury Poisonings, which will run on the main network early in 2021. 

THE SALISBURY POISONINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: After a graphic that explains that in 2018, the city of Salisbury was subject to an unprecedented chemical weapons attack, and that the story of The Salisbury Poisonings is based on firsthand accounts and interviews, we see weather reports about the “Beast From The East,” a massive cold-air mass blowing in from Russia.

The Gist: Sunday, March 4, 2018, in Salisbury, England. A girl and her mother light a candle at church. On a park bench, we see an older man and a young women staring into space, huffing out short breaths like they were having a heart attack. Then both collapse. We see the mom, Dawn Sturgess (MyAnna Buring) and her daughter Gracie (Sophia Alley), walking nearby as the cops close in on the scene.

DS Nick Bailey (Rafe Spall), working the night shift, responds to the call for a detective. When he comes upon the scene, the two people have been taken to the hospital and one of the patrol officers on the scene is cleaning up vomit from one of the victims. Bailey orders the scene get hosed down as he starts to investigate. After dropping off her daughter with her mother, Dawn meets her boyfriend Charlie (Johnny Harris), who says that the two victims ODed. “No one we know, though,” Charlie says.

An officer is about to go in and investigate the address that the male victim has on his ID, but they’re stopped when Bailey and his colleagues find out that the victim, Sergi Skirpal (Wayne Swann) is a Russian national that used to be a spy for MI5 and was imprisoned for treason. So this has now gone from an OD to a poisoning, meaning a much more cautious and extensive investigation.

Tracy Daszkiewicz (Anne-Marie Duff), the director of public health for the county of Wiltshire, is called in, as it seems the source of the poisonings has been flummoxing doctors, leading them to believe that this could be a terroristic chemical attack. Daszkiewicz joins a task force set up by the Wiltshire police, including Superintendent Dave Minty (Darren Boyd). Daszkiewicz is pretty consistent in her message to the task force; since the victims (the woman turns out to be the man’s daughter Yuli (Jill Winternitz)) were found in a public park, the possible area where others could have been poisoned is pretty large. She not only wants to block out the park but she uses any means necessary of tracing who they’ve come in contact with.

In the meantime, Bailey, coming off his shift, is experiencing some odd symptoms; his wife Sarah (Annabel Scholey) notices that his pupils are tiny, and the next morning he briefly blacks out when driving his kids back from school. Then he senses that his vision is wonky; he moves his hand in front of his face and it looks like a movie instead of real life. When he’s called in to get checked because he came in contact with the victims, the doctor who checks him out attributes his symptoms to fatigue.

As information about the poisonings leak to the press, a man named Ross Cassidy (Mark Addy) sees the report and realizes that the man is a friend of his and that he might have been the last one to see him before the poisoning. He calls the police to let them know, but he’s soon inundated by members of the press across the street from his house and knocking on his door.

Bailey gets worse overnight, and he collapses in his living room; his daughters find him there the next morning. A scientist, Prof. Tim Atkins (Jonathan Slinger) tells the task force that they’ve identified the poison used on the Skirpals; it’s a nerve agent called Novichok, which cuts the signals from the brain to the body, which sends the organs into overdrive. Several factors could be keeping the Skirpals alive, but it’s generally deadly. And here’s the big problem: It’s hard to swab for, and it can lie dormant on surfaces for decades; anyone that touches a surface with the agent on it can get poisoned, even years after the initial application.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Salisbury Poisonings feels like just about every British detective series we’ve seen of late, especially those that have aired on Acorn, BritBox or PBS, but this series sets itself apart because a) it’s based on a true story and b) the hero of the story is the director of public health, not a detective.

Our Take: Considering the fact that The Salisbury Poisonings’ story spans only four episodes, the first of them moves along a little slowly. But, then again, in an investigation like this, where facts are sporadic and solutions even more so, the lack of narrative propulsion in parts of the first episode makes a bit of sense.

We do appreciate that the series concentrates on three people who were affected by the poisonings, including Daszkiewicz. It’s not often that a public health official is at the center of a TV mystery, but it shows how critical her decisions were in locking the city down and preventing thousands of people from being poisoned.

From the research we did on the story, we know that Dawn’s boyfriend Charlie will be one of those victims that gets poisoned by touching something with the agent on it. But what we know about the couple as of now is that they like to party, and that Dawn is too hungover to pick up her daughter the next morning after having people over. So their story will come into play down the line, but it’s hard to watch it in episode 1 and try to figure out where it’s going.

Bailey’s story is much clearer; he’s a bit of an amalgamation, since the real Bailey touched something at the Skipols’ home and got poisoned that way. But his narrative path is that he got sick from the nerve agent but also somehow got better.

It feels like Daszkiewicz will really be the center of the story, and that’s just fine. Duff doesn’t play her like she’s a cop; she’s a public health official who has training in how to deal with a chemical attack, and, while she’s confident about her recommendations to the Wiltshire cop in charge of the task force, she is still a little awkward, because she’s likely not used to presenting to a roomful of cops who think what she’s proposing is extreme.

Writers Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn have managed to take a sprawling investigation that had the UK and much of the world holding its breath two years ago and synthesize it down to a manageable story. We just hope that the other three parts move along a little more quickly than part one did.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: In the meeting where Prof. Atkins tells the task force about the affects of Novichok, he says, “In terms of protecting citizens, this is about as bad as it gets.”

Sleeper Star: We’re kind of curious as to where Mark Addy’s character, a buddy of Skirpal, fits in the story. It’s not like Addy is there to play a bit part.

Most Pilot-y Line: As the cops put up metal barriers to block the park from onlookers, Daszkiewicz’ boss says that businesses are calling him wondering what’s going on. “What am I going to tell them about this?” Um, that it’s a public health emergency?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Salisbury Poisonings should hold your interest, especially if you don’t know a lot about the case on which this show is based. But even if you do, the show’s concentration on the people affected instead of the investigation itself helps keep the story moving.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Salisbury Poisonings On AMC.com