'The Salisbury Poisonings' Preview: How a national emergency threw a small city into turmoil
"This is one of the most toxic substances on earth that has been specifically designed to be invisible and undetectable," Anne-Marie Duff's Tracy Daszkiewicz says on the BBC series 'The Salisbury Poisonings'. The haunting thriller is entirely fact-based and tells the frightful story of the 2018 Novichok poisoning crisis in Salisbury, England, and the Amesbury poisonings that followed soon afterwards.
The latest trailer shared by AMC Network teases the addition of the BBC One miniseries to its catalogue. Starring British actors in key roles such as Duff as Tracy Daszkiewicz, William Houston as Ted Daszkiewicz, Rafe Spall as DS Nick Bailey, Annabel Scholey as Sarah Bailey, Darren Boyd as Supt Dave Minty, and Nigel Lindsay as DCC Paul Mills, 'The Salisbury Poisonings' is a story that brings to focus the incredible heroism showed by local people and public health services in containing a crisis that could have had adverse effects.
It was on March 4, 2018, that the emergency services in the UK were called to attend to Sergei and Yulia Skripal, who were found unconscious on a park bench. In no time, authorities discovered that Sergei is no ordinary man. Curiously, the Skripals are only seen for very brief moments at the beginning of the first episode, and the Russian suspects are not shown throughout the series. This is because the miniseries focuses on the prompt response of the community and health officials.
'The Salisbury Poisonings' is executive produced by Laurence Bowen and Chris Carey for Dancing Ledge Productions, Lucy Richer for the BBC. Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn wrote the series, which is directed by Saul Dibb. Karen Lewis serves as the producer. Writers Patterson and Lawn had reportedly spent a year in Salisbury exhaustively researching their script through extensive interviews with those involved in the incident.
Bowen, who "interviewed extensively," the real-life Tracy Daszkiewicz said, "When we met her and spoke to her, we felt that we'd sort of found a core point of view that sort of made sense of all these multiple points of view that we'd discovered in the research".
Daszkiewicz reportedly said that her character is a composite of several different people who worked towards the resolution of the aftermath. "Actress Anne-Marie Duff spent a day at Tracy's house getting to know her, and Tracy says Anne-Marie has been a 'great support' ever since."
'The Salisbury Poisonings' premieres in full on AMC+ on Thursday, October 1, 2020, and will debut on AMC linear early next year.