Writer Declan ‘flabbergasted’ after poison drama gets year’s biggest TV premiere audience
THE Northern Ireland screenwriter behind a hit TV series depicting the 2018 nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy has said he is “astonished and delighted” by its success.
The Salisbury Poisonings was broadcast over three consecutive nights on BBC 1.
Its first episode on Sunday was watched by 7.2m viewers, making it the biggest UK TV premiere this year.
Tuesday night’s emotional final episode left many viewers in tears.
Penned by former BBCNI journalist Declan Lawn and fellow EX-BBC reporter Adam Patterson, The Salisbury Poisonings starred Shameless actress Anne-marie Duff,
Rafe Spall, Myanna Buring and Johnny Harris.
It told the story of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the
UK’S intelligence services, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, who were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in March 2018.
Both were left in a critical condition but recovered.
Tragically, however, a similar poisoning incident three months later involving a discarded perfume bottle, used by the Skripals’ would-be assassins, claimed the life of Dawn Sturgess.
Declan (43) who lives in Belfast with his wife, Breige, and their four children, told the Belfast Telegraph that he never expected the series to be such a huge hit with viewers and critics alike.
He said: “We were not expecting this because the show was originally made for BBC2. So we were expecting to do a niche series; a show we all loved and would take great pride over, and we could stand over, but it was never really aimed at a mainstream audience.”
BBC network executives thought otherwise, and the series was moved to BBC1.
At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, TV bosses opted to delay the broadcast date. The decision, says the former Spotlight and Panorama journalist, was unequivocally the right one, given the obvious parallels between the 2018 story and the developing health crisis.
When the series was finally broadcast, Declan said no one connected to it knew what to expect.
“We were obviously happy with the series, we liked it, we thought it was good. We thought the acting was brilliant and the direction was brilliant,” he added.
“We definitely did not expect to get an audience of 7.2m.”
That figure is expected to get even higher, once catch-up views via iplayer are released next week.
Declan added: “We’re flabbergasted, honestly, astonished and delighted. And delighted not only because so many people have watched it but delighted in the way people have responded to it.
“They understand what we were trying to do, which was to tell the stories of ordinary people, not spies or super cops, or international geo-politics, but to tell the story of ordinary people going through a really, really hard time.”
Declan believes the series has resonated so much with viewers because of its focus on the efforts of key workers, like director of public health, Tracy Daszkiewicz (played in the series by Duff ). So too medical and police officers — all roles that came to the fore during the pandemic.
He added: “It’s about the same kinds of people who are keeping people safe in the pandemic. Because we were already standing outside every Thursday night clapping for those people, I think the fact that this series features those people means it has an extra resonance for viewers.”
While five and four-star reviews from the critics are gratifying and important, Declan believes that more important are the reactions from the real-life people depicted in the series, like the Sturgess family, who gave the series their blessing in its warm tribute of Dawn.
Declan added: “The whole point of everything we were trying to do was to take this woman’s legacy and to show her as the person she had been, other than a homeless drug addict which was how she was portrayed at the time. And just to show that she had an unique and really valuable life.”