Written and created by Jack Thorne (Wonder, Joy), Toxic Town is based on the true story of the Corby poisonings. The 2009 lawsuit at the story’s center saw Corby mothers, led by Susan McIntyre (played by Jodie Whittaker), rally together to take on the borough’s council over toxic waste mismanagement that led to their children’s disabilities. It was a hard-fought battle for recognition and reparations for their children, and one that the cast and crew of Toxic Town sought to honor in its detailed portrayal of the story. 

In order to make it as accurate as possible, the real Susan McIntyre had a simple bit of advice for Whittaker. “I said, ‘Get the accent right,’ ” McIntyre told Netflix. “And she was brilliant.” 

Jodie Whittaker and Susan McIntyre

LIAM NORRIS

What happened to the children in Corby?

Toxic Town primarily follows three young mothers: Susan McIntyre, Tracey Taylor (Aimee Lou Wood), and Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie). Susan and Maggie’s children are both born with limb differences, while Tracey’s daughter is born with a two-chamber heart, rather than one with four chambers; she dies when she is four days old. 

For Thorne, the women at the center of Toxic Town each had their own story to tell. “These three felt like they all had different angles that you could explore in the show,” he says. “And so it was like, OK, that’s our starting point. How do we tell the story of these three women?”

When a journalist gets in touch with McIntyre, she reconnects with the other mothers and realizes that her son’s limb differences are part of a wider story. 

“She meets several mums whose kids have been born with limb differences, like Connor, and it just doesn’t seem right,” Whittaker said. “Then, she’s contacted by a journalist who’s started to see similarities too. It’s pre-Internet, pre-Facebook, so it happens slowly by word of mouth, and she starts to connect the dots.”

The real McIntyre recalls her own experience piecing together the puzzle. “I was in hospital with lots of other mothers having babies, and some of them had babies that had problems with their limbs,” McIntyre said. “And I’d say, ‘Oh, you’ll be all right,’ and I’d comfort them, and then four months later, the same thing happened to me. I had a baby with the exact same thing. And I did think that was strange.”

With the help of lawyer Des Collins (Rory Kinnear), the mothers begin to unravel the truth — a mismanaged reclamation project had exposed the pregnant mothers to toxic waste and predisposed their children to being born with limb differences. It’s a tragedy enabled by the Corby Borough Council, which is desperate to keep their community financially competitive. Led by the fictional Roy Thomas (Brendan Coyle), the council neglects environmental safeguards left and right. 

“With Roy, I really wanted to make sure that we were explaining why he believes what he believes,” Thorne said. “That thing of being part of a queue outside the unemployment office with 11,000 people, and his fears about how a town like that is going to survive when he was seeing other towns all over the country being killed by industrial change, being killed by the death of industrial Britain. Roy prioritizes jobs and growth over safety, but that’s what he’s been taught, that’s the life he’s led.”

Tracey Taylor and Aimee Lou Wood

LIAM NORRIS

Why wasn’t Tracey Taylor part of the Corby lawsuit?

The claimants’ legal team was forced to make some hard choices: Namely, Taylor isn’t able to participate. In a heartbreaking scene, Collins informs the young mother, who’s since had a healthy pair of twins, that her involvement could weaken the case. Because her daughter Shelby had no limb-related differences, the prosecution could single her case out as a flaw in the claimants’ argument. 

According to Thorne, the production’s research consultant Meroë Candy was integral in the choice to center Taylor’s story. “Lots of people would have just included the mothers that won the case, but [Candy]’s clever enough to know that breadth of the story was really important here,” he said. “Tracey was interesting because of her exclusion from the case, which felt so important in telling these stories of justice.”

“What’s amazing about Tracey’s story is that she wasn't going through the same thing as the other mums,” said Aimee Lou Wood, who plays Taylor. “They all had to go through the horrible, grueling court process too, of course, but the other mums still had their children with them, and Tracey didn’t have that.”

For the real Taylor, the memories of the trial are difficult — but she remains proud of her participation. “When we were dropped as a case, it was upsetting,” Taylor told Netflix. “I still went to court, I gave my evidence, to help the other children, even though I was no longer a claimant.”

Wood agrees. “She’s the one who worked at the factory, so she has really key evidence about the dust and what it was like to work there,” she said. “So Des needs all of her information and needs her to talk about everything she’s been witness to, and she does it. She goes through all of that, pouring her heart out, knowing it isn’t even for her and Shelby, it’s for the other mums and children.”

But Taylor doesn’t see herself as the hero of the story; she has another focus. “If anybody’s the hero of this story, it’s Shelby,” she said. “Without her and what she gave up, obviously dying and being affected by the toxic waste, then I wouldn’t have been able to support and help these other mothers and children.” 

Susan McIntyre, Jodie Whittaker, Maggie Mahon

LIAM NORRIS

How did Maggie Mahon help win the case?

Toxic Town’s third protagonist is Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie), who had her own difficulties in being part of this struggle. “I don’t think Maggie ever felt part of the core team fighting this case, because their journey throughout it was really complicated,” Thorne said. 

Mahon’s son was born with a clubfoot, and her husband Derek worked at the site — but didn’t want to participate in the trial. Mahon, furious about the council’s lack of oversight, was forced to testify on her own. 

“It makes me angry,” the real Mahon said of the council’s negligence. “I don’t think anybody ever set out to cause birth defects or what have you. I think their greed and selfishness took over, and it makes me angry that they tried to belittle us all in court and make us look the bad ones. They never thought they would lose it. I think that’s what it was. There was an arrogance. It went on for so many years.”

Mahon’s testimony helped establish a crucial point for the claimants: that toxic waste spread in Corby not via the water supply, but via dust in the air. 

Fictionalized council whistleblower Ted Jenkins (Stephen McMillan) represents some of the real whistleblowers. In the dramatized series, Ted is persuaded to appear on the stand, where he testifies that the council consistently disregarded regulations, saying he’d noted at the time that companies contracted by the council to carry out reclamation works were failing to contain the dust being transported in trucks and sometimes encouraging drivers to move as quickly as possible for higher pay. 

Jenkins’ testimony is a triumphant moment for Sam Hagen (Robert Carlyle), a councilor who, in the drama, had received leaked documents from Jenkins highlighting the larger council’s negligence. The series is dedicated to the real Hagen’s memory. “His drive for truth was hugely helpful for the Corby mothers,” Thorne said. “A man who has this incredible moral certainty in the face of the machinations of others.” 

How does Toxic Town end?

As the trial reaches a climax, victory feels far from certain. The council defendants call expert witnesses who shake the foundation of the case, suggesting that their calculations are flawed, and the dust could not have come into contact with the claimants. Collins, in particular, is devastated by the news that all of their work could have been in vain. 

“He has a foot in both camps, knowing the system and knowing that it’s unfair; knowing it’s exclusionary but also knowing you have to create such a tight case,” Kinnear told Netflix. “Any opportunity to break a crack in it, the system will take that, and so he has to make it completely watertight.” 

Fortunately, the case is watertight. Collins and his team soon discover that the defendants’ expert witnesses have made an embarrassing mathematical error, and the judge soon rules in the claimants’ favor. The trial is over; the mothers and children of Corby have won. Corby council were ultimately held liable to pay compensation and legal costs and it was later revealed that the total cost of the settlement it agreed to was 14.6 million pounds. The celebration is raucous, to put it lightly. “It was a wild night of celebrating!” McIntyre remembered. 

It’s a conclusion that puts into focus the solidarity of the Corby mums — and their sense of humor. “There’s two ways of telling real-life stories,” Thorne said. “One is with great importance, and the other is, hopefully, with truth. And I think that they are genuinely funny people in real life, so if you don’t capture their genuinely funny qualities in a script, then you’re not doing them justice.” 

As Taylor told Netflix about what it meant for the mums to go to court, “We had to show we were strong independent women and prove what they did was wrong, and we were not going to be lied to.” 

McIntyre added, “That was a really scary moment, to go to court and face it all. I didn’t go to lie, I went to tell God's honest truth.” 

Even in the face of unspeakable tragedy and impossible odds, the Corby mums fight on and find joy in the midst of their struggle. “We were the underdogs,” Mahon said, “and that is the magic of the whole story.”

Toxic Town is now streaming on Netflix.