成人快手

Every week the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan join Naga Munchetty to review the new Netflix drama, Toxic Town.

The show follows the real life battle of families in Corby, Northamptonshire - whose children were born with defects in the eighties and nineties.

In court - it was argued that toxic airborne pollutants from the town’s demolished steelworks had harmed unborn babies.

Naga: "Hayley, is it a Must Watch for you?"

Hayley: "Yes, it is, unsurprisingly. I love most dramas by Jack Thorne, my brother in misery. What I think makes them work is that he knows how, in the darkest times and in the worst circumstances, there has to be a sense of humour. That's not just in TV shows, that's in life. It's a very load-bearing humour. That's through all the bleakest stuff he writes. It's all through this.

"It not only bursts a tension bubble in the drama and makes it easier to watch, but I think it's a more accurate depiction of how people are. When two of the mothers are in hospital overnight because something is wrong with their unborn babies, they're joking about farts. You have to.

"I also think he writes women really well. In the wrong hands, this could have come off as a kind of Charlie's Angels superhero story, but this isn't. They're never anything more than determined mums. He never makes them look stupid, even though sometimes they don't fully understand something. They are fighting something that is completely outside of their sphere of knowledge. So I think the writing is excellent. I think the cast are brilliant. Amy Lou Wood is particularly heartbreaking."

Naga: "I love that she's getting more roles."

Hayley: "She's so good. She plays a mother whose baby died four days after she was born.

"And I know it's a smaller role, but I thought Joe Dempsie, as one of the guys who drove the trucks, was brilliant at putting across this incredibly heavy sense of shame at what he had been a part of, even though he didn't even have that many lines. He was just in the background for most of it. I thought this was great."

Scott: "You could really sense his guilt that he was having, but also that complete denial for most of it and the realisation that actually what he had been told was right."

Hayley: "I thought all the stuff in the beginning with the women washing the red dust off the windows and it going through the gutters and everything. It was very much like that scene in Chernobyl, where they go to the bridge and they're watching the beautiful colours in the sky."

Scott: "That's what I thought too!"

Hayley: "The most domestic small things, when put in this story, become horror."

Scott: "Yeah, because I totally agree with you because there's a scene, it's such a 'blink and you'll miss it' moment - there's a moment where Jodie Whittaker, her character, is having an argument out on a public street. Then you then see a truck fly past, releasing all of these toxins and you realise that’s the cause.

"It's so subtle that nobody realises it until episode three. I mean, this also had, like you said, a lot of humour within it. I think it also hones in on, of course, the awfulness, the sadness, for the devastation caused.

"But it also, I think, highlights and hones in on the good of humanity, the whistleblowers who knew that something was wrong and risked their careers in order to leak this information. The council members like the late Sam Hagen, played by Robert Carlisle, who risked his own career...

Hayley: "He had some good lines."

Scott: "I think it also looks at the mountain you have to climb legally in terms of just having to prove something, particularly that this was the first time that there had been the first case of a link between airborne pollutants and health problems.”

Hayley: "It also covered all the legal stuff without it becoming heavy and boring."

Scott: "Which is so hard to do. I think that's the hardest thing to do is having exchanges within a court in 'English', essentially, which is so hard to carry.

"But I think it’s a masterstroke and the reason why it really works, I think, is that the leads are not in a one-dimensional light. They are given so much complexity to their character that you end up feeling like you really know them. I've been impressed with Jodie Whittaker from when she was in Broadchurch. I think this is her best role."

Naga: "She's fantastic."

Scott: "She's fantastic in this because you see her, of course, with this burden. She feels a lot of shame in her own actions in this but it also looks at her determination to keep going."

Naga: "The subject matter absolutely makes it a Must Watch in terms of 'we should know about what happened' but the fact that it's acted so well is such a bonus."

Hayley: "I think there's a difference between being forced to eat your greens, ie watch something that you should know about. Jack Thorne makes it human. So you never feel like you're watching something that you should be watching because you need to know about this thing."

You can watch all four episodes of Toxic Town on Netflix now.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or lamenting on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

This week, the team reviewed The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed and Towards Zero.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening on 成人快手 Sounds.