PUTIN'S INVISIBLE KILLER
A GRIPPING DRAMATISATION OF RUSSIA’S POISON ATTACK IN SALISBURY AND THE DESPERATE SEARCH FOR...
THE SALISBURY POISONINGS Sunday-Tuesday, BBC1, 9pm
Aman and a woman lay slumped on a bench in the sleepy Wiltshire cathedral city of Salisbury. It was a scene that scarcely drew the attention of passers-by in March 2018, but this was the moment that the unthinkable had happened – the first ever chemical weapons attack to take place on British soil.
The two stricken figures were a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia.
Forensic tests quickly revealed that they had been poisoned with Novichok, one of the most potent substances ever made – so deadly that a spoonful could be enough to kill thousands of people.
Immediately the authorities were caught up in a heart-stopping race against time to find and eradicate every trace of the toxin before countless lives were lost.
Two years on, the events hardly seem credible, but now the full story can be told in an enthralling three-part series based on extensive interviews with those involved. At the heart of the drama is Wiltshire director of public health Tracy Daszkiewicz (Anne-Marie Duff). She’s in charge of the vast operation to trawl through once innocuous local shops and restaurants to find the invisible and virtually undetectable poison that threatens a community of tens of thousands.
The bare facts of the events may already be familiar to many viewers, but watch and you’ll discover how mass murder may have been only narrowly averted, thanks to the unceasing dedication of Daszkiewicz and her team. And with their talk of contagion, contact tracing and ‘locking this down’, it’s a search that eerily presages the current pandemic.
Police detective Nick Bailey (Rafe Spall) is entrusted with the investigation that will eventually point the finger at Putin’s stooges – who would later ludicrously claim on Russian TV they had only been visiting Salisbury to see its cathedral – but he falls ill after entering the Skripals’ house.
This is also the story of Dawn Sturgess (MyAnna Buring), who was exposed to Novichok when her boyfriend gave her a bottle of perfume he had found, not realising it contained the poison that had been discarded by the assassins. Both ended up in hospital and Sturgess died, four months after the original attack.
Buring’s emotive, heartfelt performance brilliantly brings Sturgess to life and reminds us of the price paid by an innocent woman for a scheme of shocking wickedness cooked up by spymasters in a faraway land.