The Salisbury Poisonings

Novichok comes to England ... The story of Putin's hit men trying to take out a former double agent ... A dab on the door handle ... Lockdown and fear as police and health experts struggle to contain this most deadly of nerve agents ... Alexi Navalny the latest victim of state ordered poisoning ... Miss Lumière files from well behind the front line  

Yulia & Sergei Skripal: cheers 

Watching the BBC's four part series about the extraordinary events of March 2018 in Salisbury, the non-descript English town of 46,000 pasty souls, is terrifyingly prescient in a rear vision sort of way. 

At the time, what unfolded seemed as gothic as the town's famous cathedral.

Two years later, the brazen nerve agent attack on former Soviet spy (and British double agent) Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and its attendant tropes of outrageous contagion (full body suits, masks, sprays, contact tracing) seem chillingly familiar, courtesy of Covid.

As well, there's the diabolical timing of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny's similar fate just last week.

As we watch from the claustrophobic discomfort of our locked down living rooms, Navalny is fighting for his life in a German hospital room - another victim of Vladimir Putin's dark ambition. 

The toxin within the poisoned chalice (in this case a plastic cuppa from an airport café) appears to be contained within Navalny's comatose body.

Not so the Novichok cunningly administered to the Skripals via their suburban front door knob. 

As The Salisbury Poisonings spells out early on, it is one of the most contagious and lethal substances known on earth. 

How it was tracked down, isolated and contained - and then reappeared several months later in nearby Amesbury to deadly effect - is the subject of this meticulously researched, tautly written and quietly moving mini-series.

It's the BBC, so it's no surprise that plenty of effort went into getting the facts, via witness statements and contemporaneous documentation.

The writers (Panorama journalists Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn) have created an atmosphere of restrained hysteria, fear and disbelief, punctuated by the personal stories of several collateral victims.

These include one of the first police officers on the scene, DS Nick Bailey (another convincing turn by the underrated Rafe Spall) and poor, desperate Dawn Sturgess (MyAnna Buring) who died after dabbing what she thought was an upmarket scent on her wrists. It was, tragically, the discarded Novichok bottle.

The series focuses on the dogged director of public health for Wiltshire, Tracy Daszkiewicz (portrayed by an increasingly riven Anne-Marie Duff) who is charged with managing the unfolding disaster of an international incident.

The British government, then led by Theresa May, wasted no time in fingering the Soviets (Novichok was developed by the Russian military in the 70s) and promptly expelled a number of diplomats.

However, the drama here is more local, and all the more powerful for it.

Looking for Novichok in Salisbury

The writing and performances are grittily natural and believable, with a tension so palpable Miss Lumière several times thought she might be watching the real thing (albeit moodily lit and beautifully edited).

The final episode has an appropriately elegiac mood, two years on from the worst public health crisis Britain has ever (miraculously) averted. 

Director Saul Dibb has eerily evoked both the present and the past in The Salisbury Poisonings, which may make it the perfect armchair antidote to life in 2020. Or not.

The Salisbury Poisonings is streaming on SBS On Demand